Hot Air Balloon Glow at Blueberry Festival

Shooting photos of the Plymouth, Indiana Blueberry Festival Hot Air Balloon Glow on Labor Day Weekend this year proved to be similar to playing a game of Whack-A-Mole, the arcade game that you use a mallet to hit the toy moles that randomly pop out of their holes.

A Hot Air Balloon Glow is performed at dusk with the balloons using their burners to light up the inside of the balloon, giving a glowing effect against the dusk sky. A brilliant sight for sure, but the problem with trying to photograph the event is that they rarely have all the balloons lite at the same time. Apparently the burners get very hot and can only blow the fire in short bursts, with the longest being maybe four or five seconds.

For most of the event, which lasted about 10 minutes, the announcer had each balloon fire up their burner one at a time. Only twice did the event announcer ask the balloons to light up at the same time, and even then a few were late in getting their burners fired up, while others had already did their burst.

But I was able to get two or three shots of three or more balloons glowing at the same time. Therefore I consider it a success. I was hired by the First Federal Bank in Plymouth to shoot some photos of the Hot Air Balloon Glow, along with the spectacular Fireworks display immediately after all the balloons were packed up and carted out!