Longmont Balloon Pilot

BALLOON_PILOT © MediaNews Group 2013/Times-Call 2013

On Sunday, June 2, 2013 my alarm went off at 5AM. I was headed to Frederick to follow a hot air balloon pilot from take off to landing. This was a photo essay I had been wanting to work on for some time. I was interested in finding a pilot who was passionate about flying and it took some time to find a source that wasn’t a commercial pilot. When I did finally find some one, I found exactly the person I needed.

Sometimes to find a good source for a story you have to hit the street and knock on a few doors. That is exactly what I did. After a short conversation about what I was working on and what I wanted to accomplish I was invited into Chuck and Nancy Mitchell’s home. Inside I found 2 people who were passionate about flying along with a fair amount of hot air balloon memorabilia from around the country. They gave me a brief history of how they got hooked on hot air ballooning and how they named their balloon Nanchuckit’s Burning Desire. All that was left to do was to go make pictures.

BALLOON_PILOT © MediaNews Group 2013/Times-Call 2013