On the way back home from both trips we had two very nice surprises. The first one was a balloon festival in Pagosa Springs, Colorado on the way home from Ignacio in mid-September. The day was perfect for ballooning, and the crystal-clear sky combined with the incredible colors and designs of the balloons begged for some photos! Pulling into a closed bank parking lot on the outskirts of town, I put my drone up (very cautiously-keeping my distance) and got some great views of the overall landscape and pageantry of the event. Then, as a few of the balloon crews steered our way, I pulled out my high-res Canon 5DS-R (50 megapixel sensor), slapped on my 70-200mm long lens, and fired away. It's amazing how much detail this camera can capture as long as you keep it stable.

Then the next surprise came on the way home from Utah south of Socorro, New Mexico. I've visited the Bosque Del Apache Wildlife reserve a couple of times in the past at the wrong times of the season. Our most consistent encounters had always been with hordes of man-eating mosquitoes- no birds! This time, in mid-December, the park was absolutely teeming with migrating birds of all stripes. We arrived at the park just at daybreak in order to capture what I've been told is an awe-inspiring mass takeoff of water birds. Well, incredibly, when I looked for my camera bag in the car, it was no where to be found!! I was in a panic. I did have one camera (with the wrong lens attached) loose in the back seat, but all my other gear was left in our motel room back in Socorro. My wife and I pointed a few fingers on how that happened, but bottom line was that she drove the 1-hour round-trip back to Socorro to retrieve the bag while I froze my butt off doing my best to get some early images with the wrong lenses and camera. I'll definitely be back next year at the same time better prepared for the shoot. One bright spot was the image above of the turkey gobblers. I've never seen so many gobblers in a group displaying like they were in a non-mating season time of year! Fearing that I'd miss the light and perfect location of the flock, I also hurried things a bit and opted to go hand-held with my long lens instead of taking the time to put it on a tripod. The "tack-sharpness" of most of the images I got was not there for printing purposes, but they still were worthy of this blog moment.