2,500'

Last weekend I woke up at 3:35am to drive to Temecula for the 2010 balloon & wine festival. It was definitely worth the early wake up!

I want to go over some brief precautions and notices for anyone planning on going. First, definitely spend the extra money and go during the festival.

When you arrive to the parking lot you'll be utterly confused where to go and everyone we asked wasn't quite sure either. So, park close to the festival ticket booth. We entered through the EXIT - I'm not sure if that's how its like every year but keep that in mind.

Next, WEAR A HAT! I read that on the website but thought it wasn't really necessary. ITS FREAKING NECESSARY!!!

If you want pictures pack wide, long and TRAVEL SIZE. They DO NOT allow you to take bags up with you, you leave them behind on the ground. All in the air images were on my 5d2 + 16-35 and fisheye. I wish I could have taken up my 70-200.

Also, if you think you can get those cool ground shots looking up with a ton of balloons - you'll be in for quite a task. It's hard to be in the air and on the ground at the same time. After you check in you'll need to stay around your pilot so that when everyone (8 passengers on our flight) show up you immediately go to your balloon and they start inflating it. Hopefully you get luck and are able to get lots of cool ground shots, but I wasn't really.

Here's our take off video. Moving around is VERY little when you're inside the basket. Thank goodness my girlfriend is a twig and I was able to turn sort of easily.



It REALLY is floating on air! Once you take off you just float, its amazing.

We got up to around 2,500'. Below is what 2,500' and a fisheye look like. Pretty fucking awesome.



To wrap up, its definitely something I'd like to do again, but with a hat and a long lens. I leave you with a few stills captured with my wide angles.

The Lab + Crystal Cove + Grand Tradition Estate

This is a continuation of the weekend, Sundays wedding.

I frequent The Lab in Costa Mesa now and then and knew it was a great spot for photos. I was lucky enough that my couple also agreed it was a great spot and also wanted to shoot at Crystal Cove beach.


































They celebrated their wedding this past weekend at Grand Tradition Estate in Fallbrook. This place was awesome; the staff was superb, location was great and we had great light. More importantly the couple was awesome.





































































The photo below needs some explanation. At first glance you'd think its someone crying for happiness but instead its for sadness.

After the wedding I was walking to grab my stuff and I overhead the lady (pictured) ask a worker if the wedding had started, she replied with "its already over". I knew it was game time for me so I observed what was happening and shot.

I don't recall ever being sad at a wedding, but this was the first time. I really empathized with the lady, but thankfully I covered the wedding well and my photo's should do the story justice.




I overshot my 5D classic so I was forced to buy a 5d2. I won't go into what I think about it, but I do like the video although its a pain to focus manually. Here's a short clip I took at the reception.