Up, Up and Away

It's been a busy week for me and my camera.   Last Saturday, it was Bridge Day and last night it was "night glow" for the Balloon Festival.  Night glow is what they call it when a bunch of hot air balloons fill up at night and light up on the ground.

This year it was at the Morgantown Mall.  I arrived early to catch a decent parking place and some dinner.  The night glow area was roped off between the old Sears (now, temporarily a Halloween store) and Lowes,

Some people started filling up while it was still daylight.  Here's one of them -- a very cool cat.

Once it got dark, they turned off the lights in the parking lot and let the visitors mill around amongst the balloons.  I really like to photograph the red balloon.  Here's a nice view of a number of balloons lined up and lit.  It was a lot like trying to photograph fireflies.   They all lit up and blinked independent of one another.  I had a few lucky shot where I caught several lighting up at a time.

Saving my favorite for last. The flames on these are overexposed, but it's still a nice shot.  I touched it up a little bit with Topaz Studio.

Bridge Day 2019

On Saturday, October 19, I drove down to the Bridge Day festival near Fayetteville, W.Va.  The festival is one time of the year when the New River Bridge is closed to vehicular traffic, allowing an assortment of base jumpers and rappellers to do their thing, while a massive throng of spectators crowd themselves along the bridge.   Vendors hawk their wares on either end of the bridge.

The sky quickly clouded over by the time I arrived late in the morning.  Still, the view from the bridge is quite spectacular.   The New River gorge, below the bridge is part of a national park.

It was a struggle to work my way through the mass of people to get myself close enough to get pictures of some of the jumpers.   I had to practically hang from the bridge railing to get some of these shots:

There is a visitors center on the north side of the bridge, which gives a different view of the activities.  Check out all of the rappelling lines.   There are four rappellers in this shot, along with one base jumper who is just starting to deploy their parachute.