Upon each first weekend of December the Red Rock Balloon Rally occurs in Red Rock State Park (Gallup, NM). I had the pleasure of attending this event on December 6th, and 7th. The event was scheduled on the 8th but, the weather was poor so I didn’t bother showing up.

This balloon festival became my favorite when I first experienced it in 2017. The large red rocks flanking the launch sites makes for a good photography experience. Add some observers on top of the rocks, and there’s a great sense of scale of how large the hot air balloons and the rocks are. The Red Rock Balloon Rally also has the added benefit of being one of the largest balloon rallies in the United States. The website used to state that the festival was the second largest balloon rally but, I guess it is no longer… There really is no contest here; the Red Rock Balloon Rally is the most visually stunning festival in the southwest.

The 6th was a bit cloudy, and I didn’t think it made for the best photos. However, I did get to fly though! I wasn’t expecting to fly so, all I got to bring aboard was my 24-70mm lens which clearly did not have enough reach for the photos that I wanted. I should consider purchasing a more consumer oriented zoom lens that goes from wide to long telephoto, like a 24-240mm lens. These lenses aren’t visually stunning but, at least they would allow me to get whatever composition that I wanted.

The magic really happened on the 7th with partly cloudy skies with some of my photos. The clouds were more clustered to the southeast of the launch field so I tried to best line up photos facing that way. Of course, not every photo can be facing that one direction so I had to settle for some cloudless shots of the balloons.

Also on the 7th, I got to take a Canon EOS R with the 24-105mm F4 L lens to try out. It’s a pretty decent combination, and I could easily recommend it to most photographers. The camera is also on super-sale right now for $1500 USD for the body. With full-frame mirrorless cameras being so aggressively priced, I think it’s time for us DSLR shooters to transition over. Spoiler alert, I already have (not to Canon though). I’ll have to make some blog posts about the R, and my switch to mirrorless another time.

Take a look below at the gallery. Honestly, I would have thrown out most of the images from the 6th but, I’ve edited some just to show what was going on when I got to take flight. Also, you might notice some color differences in some of the images. The Canon RAW files do behave a bit differently than the Nikon RAWs. I didn’t adjust my editing style though as things were close enough for now.