This past Memorial Day Weekend was when the Rio Grande Classic competition took place. Hosted by the Top Gun Ballooning Club, around 30 pilots participated in demonstrating their skills for some prizes. I was there to photograph the event as a volunteer along with another photographer who also was a judge.

The last time this event occurred was in 2019. Thanks to the pandemic, they weren’t able to push forward with one in 2020. Since then, my camera equipment has changed, twice, and this event was a good test for if I had made good decisions.

In 2019, I had Nikon equipment, and then in December of 2020 I updated my equipment to the Panasonic S1R with lenses. Of course, I almost didn’t do anything with the S1R in 2020. It was a fine camera but then I got curious about moving to medium format. Now I have the Hasselblad X1D ii, a medium format camera (cropped medium format if we’re pedantic) with three lenses: the 45mm F4, the 90mm F3.5, and the 35-75mm F3.5-4.5. I am still lacking a long telephoto which definitely did hurt this time. I plan on getting the 135mm F2.8 plus the 1.7x teleconverter but, financially, that’s probably going to happen late this year. I would like to write more about my experiences with the Hasselblad but, that’s a blog post for another time.

I will say that I did not sleep well at all during the weekend. Event organizers would meet at 5 a.m. every morning, and heck, I was the last one to show up despite being “on time”. I was so out of it on Saturday that I brought the wrong camera bag! It was a camera bag but, it wasn’t the bag with my camera in it… Hot air ballooning demands early mornings, and with having done nothing last year, I’m not ready for it.

All three days of the competition had fairly fast winds which made it tricky for the pilots. On the first day, only a few pilots reached the targets. The second day saw a bit more success but, it was still only a handful of pilots reaching the targets. The last day looked poor on the weather forecast, however, the winds had calmed down enough for the judges to give the green light on the competition. Many more pilots reached the targets on the last day.

Photo-wise, the lack of a long telephoto felt bad. Since few pilots were able to reach the targets on the first two days, I didn’t have many balloons to photograph up close. I saw great compositions but they all required a lens much longer than 90mm. Even on the last day, despite all of the balloons getting close up, a long telephoto would have been nice. There will be more ballooning events that I will attend while lacking such a lens so, this is going to be a consistent problem until I get the funds for the 135mm with the 1.7x teleconverter.

The photos I have made demonstrate the event pretty well. I may need to revisit these another time as I don’t see any long term keepers right now. I think that I mainly need more practice as I didn’t photograph a ballooning event for over a year. The lack of sleep may have contributed to my below average performance…

Below are the photos for your amusement. Please look forward to my next post which should happen in early July!