Interestingly, Chris and Martin never made to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Here's how close we once came in 1993!
In early 1993, after a shoot at Andrews AFB we were hired to produce a corporate video for a company in Ft. Worth. The company was flying all their HQ staff to the Albuquerque ballooning event and Chris and I were to accompany them documenting all their events along the way. Private flights and all. This was scheduled for October 2 to 10, 1993.
The same client asked if we’d produce a promotional video for a ballooning event they were coordinating in Shanghai, China in October. We produced the video with our stock photos and clips the client took in Shanghai. The China event promotor liked our work, so we were hired to document the entire event in Shanghai, all expenses paid, plus our fee. Cool! Chris bought us a Chinese translation book.
In the late 1980’s we’d produced a ballooning crew training video for Dan Sherrill (Railroad Bar-B-Q who catered our wedding). The video is still used by events around the world. He’d also contracted us to shoot two hot air balloon events he managed in connection with the Maryland Preakness. Plus, Dan facilitated our spending 10 days shooting a balloon event in Guanajuato, Mexico in November 1992. Dan asked if we would shoot the Mexico event again in November, 1993. Yes, please!
Dan also asked if we’d join him in early November, prior to the Mexico shoot, for a weekend in San Antonio. He wanted to use our videos to promote his services facilitating corporate hot air ballooning events. Okay, busy couple of months.
Later that year, Dan notified us that the man coordinating the ’93 Guanajuato event was in a nasty divorce and his wife had impounded his balloon. Event cancelled. The China promoter called to say the China sponsors did not come through and that event was cancelled. Finally we were notified that the company in Ft. Worth decided to use their in-house video team for the Albuquerque trip. Argh!
So we spent a weekend with Dan in San Antonio. We never tried to do Albuquerque again. Our last ballooning video was shot in Alpine in 1997. I wish we’d had the digital cameras we have now vs SVHS at that time.
Chris and Martin still see the Austin ballooning folks regularly and Rusty, one of the pilots produced a video that we made available about Albuquerque.
