Disclaimer: I let my partner take the controls for this shot with my 40D. Me? I was down the far end of the balloon, with two other guys, yanking down on a rope to prevent premature airborne-ness. And quite a good job she did too, considering that on this very morning, the morning of a hot air balloon flight no less, my 40D decided that it would no longer respond directly to shutter commands. If you hold down the button long enough and press it hard enough, it'll eventually fire. When it's ready. That means that the shots from the flight, which will be going into my Miscellaneous Melbourne gallery, were something of a "spray and pray" proposition using burst mode. (And an absurdly high ISO since I forgot to reset it from our pre-launch balloon shots, having been distracted by having a shutter that no longer fired consistently.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were originally scheduled to take this flight during our June trip. I have no idea what made me think it was a good idea to go on a hot air balloon flight in Melbourne in winter, but that was the plan. However by the time we were due to go we both had horrible doses of the 'flu. Thankfully, the flight was cancelled because of strong winds. We therefore rescheduled for this trip. (Well, we were thankful at the time. It was only later that we found out that having flights cancelled isn't uncommon. One of our group had gone through 7 cancellations, with the pilots mentioning 13 and 16 cancellations in other cases. Since we don't head for Melbourne every day, we were happy to have had just the one.)

I made the call to the balloon company on Sunday night as requested and received the advice that the flight was going ahead. We were to meet at 5:45 the next morning in the hotel lobby. (Yes, I forgot to change the clock on the 40D again after we moved to Daylight Savings time; the correct timestamp for this shot is + 1 hour.) At the appointed time we arrived, and all piled into a bus which then headed north-east into the City of Darebin. (Which isn't just one location; it covers a lot of ground but seems to be centred around the suburb of Preston.)

The first launch location was abandoned after a test balloon was launched. We then proceeded on to the next one, which passed muster. Then it came time to prepare the balloon for launch. Almost everyone pitched in in some fashion, though it wasn't required. As I said, I was at the far end holding down the top of the balloon so unfortunately I missed seeing the more spectacular fireworks in the inflation process... though I get to see them here.

With only the slightest of bumps we were in the air, drifting south-west back toward the city. If you haven't tried ballooning, you really should, funds permitting. It's an experience which can't easily be compared to any other.

It was amazing how precisely the pilot was able to guide us in, only a few stories above the buildings (exchanging waves with some of the people on the street below) for a landing right outside the MCG, only a couple of minutes from where we'd started a couple of hours earlier. It was indeed a choice experience, even with a dodgy shutter release.