squee! hot air balloon festival.. AND a hot air balloon ride! presque isle, maine photographersamantha marie photography

I've been incredibly lucky in what I've experienced in my life so far. I've been able to travel a whole bunch with two trips to San Francisco, Ireland, Boston, New York, DC, and I've been in like 15 states while on a cross country bus trip from Cali to Bangor. And I've been on a hot air balloon ride. I could have done with out the bus trip, but the hot air balloon ride is something I'd like to do again! holy amazing views, batman!

Every year Presque Isle has the Crown of Maine Balloon Fest where balloon pilots from all over the country come to PI for a few days to, well.. fly balloons! I've only been able to go one year (seriously, I fail at scheduling things.) but the shots I got are amazing and it made me so jealous I couldn't go in one!

it did not, however, make me jealous of the pilot and their crew. a lot of work and training goes into getting a balloon ready to launch and almost as much upon landing. no thanks, I'll stick to taking photos of them doing it all ;)

the one year I got to go, I took a whole bunch of really awesome photos and messed around with some different lenses. if you're not trained about how it works, you can't go on the field (and I didn't realize there was a training for it!) so I was stuck behind the fence like everyone else. :( buttttt I had a good zoom lens, so I busted that bad boy out and got a couple of these ones with it:

and along with the KFC Blues Breaker balloon photos, I got this one of the pilot's son helping out..

and it can be seen in the Presque Isle AND Houlton KFC! and in exchange for being able to use it, I got a free hot air balloon ride! score! more on that after a couple more photos of the Balloon Fest!

So I am super thankful to Derik and his crew for getting up ridiculously early so I could have a hot air balloon ride on a chilly September day. since it has to be pretty much perfect weather conditions, we had like 2 days notice on the flight. luckily it was in the middle of the week and no one gets up super duper early for photos anyway!

it warmed up and since it was in the fall, the colors were gorgeous. the views were spectacular, conditions were perfect, and I still have the piece of grass from the landing! it's tradition to have champagne/sparking cider at the landing, and giving a bottle to the landowner for letting us land there. here's just a few from the ride, with tons more in the slideshow!