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22-JAN-2011 Cindy Flood

Soft Landing

Lake Havasu City, Arizona

This hot air balloon landed on the golf course in front of our condo. You can see the Ferris Wheel across the channel at the Balloon festival site. The mountains are in California across the three mile wide Lake Havasu/Colorado river. As an aside, when McCullough brought the London Bridge over to LHC, he had it constructed on dry land. This channel that you are seeing was dredged after the bridge was in place. It created the island portion of Lake Havasu City. The channel comes in from the lake, goes under the bridge and continues back out to the lake to the south.

Sony Alpha Nex-5 ,Contax G Carl Zeiss 90 f/2.8
1/400s f/8.0 iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Fred Gary02-Mar-2011 03:34
Great composition, perfect landscape shot. Everything in focus from front to back, great detail and light.
Cindi Smith04-Feb-2011 04:29
Hope the golfers didn't mind. What a lovely vista!
Michael Edwards24-Jan-2011 11:32
Amazingly clear air, and beautiful color rendition.
The Sony is a strong contender.
Focusing the 90 on that litt camera must be a little tough?
Pete Hemington24-Jan-2011 11:11
A very accomplished shot the balloon just below the horizon and I enjoyed your interesting background info.
Cindy Flood24-Jan-2011 03:06
Thanks for your kind words, Hal.
hal 24-Jan-2011 00:49
Excellent photo and story, Cindy. McCullough was clearly a man with a vision.
Coyotes gotta live too l suppose, but one wonders why they don't relocate them
to a more remote area. lt's a little like the introduced foxes here that prey on the
sea bird's and wader's nests. One rarely sees ducklings these days.
Some foxes are used to humans and live in the trailer park a few hundred
yards from the sea bird nests. l see and photograph their paw-prints on the beach.


Cindy Flood24-Jan-2011 00:29
Thank you for your kind comments Jim, Jeff, Frank and Terry.

Terry, The mound is a sand storage mound on the golf course. They actually landed down by the golfers. Last week when we played golf, we saw a coyote go into that brushy area behind the mound. It went in there and laid down and I wasn't 20 feet from it. It didn't seem to be afraid of me. It was probably born on the golf course. We hear coyote's at night and last year they cleaned out the flock of Gamble's quail that lived in the bushes under our balcony) while we were here.
Guest 24-Jan-2011 00:26
what a view....
Terry_O23-Jan-2011 23:54
I have to agree with the others, this is a really fine composition, Cindy! What
fun it had to be to watch these. Is that mound a standard landing area?
Frank Kavanagh Photography23-Jan-2011 20:40
Another beautiful shot Cindy, he must be one hell of a pilot.
Fantastic colour on those balloons.
stoge23-Jan-2011 18:01
Balloons Over Havasu! The Mtns make an awesome backdrop!
lots to see here without being too busy! Well Done!
Jim Stiles23-Jan-2011 16:32
Cind, I love this shot! The lighting is superb, and with the balloon up close on the left and the other balloons across the image on the right it makes my eye wander through the entire frame. Very nice composition! PS, love the story about the London Bridge!

--Jim--