RENO AIR BALLON RACES 2003

In September 2003 during a visit with my wife's parents in Reno, Nevada, I was invited to attend the annual Reno Air Balloon Races. We arrived at Rancho San Rafael Park before sunrise and I wandered around, photographing the Dawn Patrol as they prepared and launched their balloons in the dark.

When I returned to the viewing area, my father-in-law, Dick Gammick, asked if I wanted to ride in one of the balloons that would soon be taking off. Believe it or not, I wasn't sure at first, because we told our wives we would be home no later than 10:00 a.m. But, after a moment's indecision, I decided the opportunity to ride in a hot air balloon outweighed any trouble I might get into for being late.

The balloon I rode in was the American Eagle, and you can see a picture of her here as she is pulled towards a parking lot for deflation at the end of the race. The American Eagle did not take part in the race; instead she was the first balloon to launch after the Dawn Patrol and carried the American flag aloft as the national anthem was played officially opening the races. This gave me a perfect vantage point to photograph the other balloons as they were inflated and floated into the morning sky. The wind carried us east of the launching area, so I was fortunate to have the early morning light behind me as well as Mt. Rose and the Sierra Nevada mountains behind the rising balloons forming a perfect backdrop.

I used a Fuji FinePix 3800 digital camera with the resolution set at 3 Mb. I used Microsoft's Photo Editor utility to crop and adjust each image's brightness and contrast. The webpages were constructed using mostly a trial version of Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX Studio with some follow-up editing done with Evrsoft's free 1stPage 2000 html editor.

This gallery contains my favorite images from that day. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the right guy (thanks Dick!).

I hope you enjoy viewing them as much I enjoyed making them.

Jim Coulter