Sue and I spent a few days at SML this past weekend. There was supposed to be a hot air balloon festival of sorts, they were going to launch the balloons at 8:00pm on Saturday night, after it got dark. Should have made for some interesting photos as the burners fired in the dark. But, it was called off because of rain and threatening weather in the afternoon. Turned out that the weather would have been fine by 8pm, but certainly didn’t look like it earlier in the day. I did get to photograph a really nice sunset Saturday evening though….maybe better than a bunch of hot air balloons flying around!
First up, a photo from Friday morning before we left. I had to make a trip to Charlottesville early on Friday, so caught this one on the way.
And this was Friday night’s sunset. Not too bad, but Saturday night’s was better….
They were offering, for $5, tethered hot air balloon rides on Friday evening. Not very exciting for pictures, but the lines were quite long for the rides.
The next two are from Portside. We hung out there for a while and had a beer. We should have eaten lunch there, it looked a LOT better than what we’d eaten earlier for lunch. These two photos are pushing the HDR thing a little bit….maybe a little bit too much…..
Okay, we’re getting closer to the sunset. This was Saturday afternoon….impending rain. Can’t really blame them for canceling the hot air balloon thing.
Another version, in black and white….
And the sunset. No color enhancement needed. It is slightly underexposed which punches the colors a bit, but that’s it. The whole sky to the west was this pinkish orangeish purplish color.
A few minutes after the one above…
Last one before it got dark…
Nice photos, John, and a wonderful story of a day at the lake. I like the progression of the day through your images. Great blog!!
Thanks Pat!!