A Dream come true (well almost)

What inspired me:
I was planning to capture a balloon flying over mountain top for a long time. In my dream I have many times went to Burma or Winthrop to take a photo of floating balloons. Somehow I was determined to do it in 2017. So when I saw this event popped up in Facebook, I was super excited and wanted to do it badly. If you are excited like me now, please read on :)
When:
I planned early during the week to do it. I had to re arrange my weekend a bit to attend this 9:30 PM event. Well, as a father of two sometimes I have to realign my photographic endeavor. So this time I took both of them with me to have a great time with my kids while capturing my dream event.
I took this in the first week of July 2017.
Where
I had to drive around 75 min to reach there from my home. For all of your planning reference, this is around 1 hour from Seattle. The event was at Arlington Airport during the Arlington fly in event.
Philosophy:
With most of my photos, I wanted my viewers to look into this photo and transported to the place in their mind. Here my goal was also to showcase the human expression of freedom and adventure.
This was shot with my Olympus EM 10 and the Olympus 12-40 pro lens.
Disappointment but Smile
To see the floating balloon with the backdrop of glacier mountain would have been amazing experience. With the sunset color, it would have been my dream come true. Alas, then I figured out this is not going to happen at all, the event was always a stationary balloon event (think many cry symbol here).
To make it to the effort we have already put in, I tried to find a good position to take all three balloons together with the engine ignition on. It was challenging since they were doing it on a round robin basis. So I had to do a 30 sec exposure with F 5.6 to take this one. My kids were happy to see all three balloons together at least. Well I had to bribe them with a popcorn pack.
The Post Processing
This is a single shot. So not much complicated. I compared around 20 images to decide on this single one.
It is all in Lightroom and changed few things. I have modified the white balance to capture the darkened trees. I added a gradient on top and increased the temperature to capture the moving clouds better and make it prominent. The balloons were already looking nice but I increased the vibrancy a little more to offset the dark condition.
In my bag:
From last year, the bag has changed. I now carry my Nikon D7200 and the trusted OM D EM10 camera with a 12–40 pro lens. This was taken with my Olympus camera. I now also carry a torch with me. It helped during this photoshoot as well. The thing which has not changed, is the small pouch with few memory cards. Believe me, it will be required someday.
Any advice for others trying to capture something similar?
Research more, ask questions before you go for an event to ensure your expectations are met. Use a good wide lens with any camera of your choice for landscape.
Also, if you are a father and planning to take your kids with you, keep some cash to calm them down with something interesting while you are busy. I am lucky that they were super helpful that day but all day are not same.
Keep smiling..
Oh by the way, these two was taken just before we reached. So everything was not lost you see..


