What you haven’t realised (or perhaps you did, and that’s why you’re here) is that the lighting conditions are going to be really difficult. Balloon flights nearly always occur at dawn, due to the weather conditions (particularly wind). But dawn is a really tricky time to take photographs.

Here’s what I did on a recent flight, it seemed to work pretty well.

Before the flight: choose your equipment. I cut back to two lenses – an 18-55 for wide-angle shots, and a 70-300 for telephoto. A polarising filter would have been a good addition, but I don’t have one of those.

Next, before the flight setup: I knew that I’d need pretty fine control, so I set my camera for full manual mode. I also checked the other settings, such as for the cursed ‘bracket’ mode – I have taken so many almost good photos ruined by forgetting to turn bracketing off.

Getting there: my flight started 30 minutes or so before dawn with the setup for the balloon. It was effectively dark at this point – I was shooting 18mm f/4.5 1/60″ ISO 6400 and getting photos that only had material in the far end of the histogram. That’s pretty much the extreme of my camera in terms of low-light.

Once dawn twilight started I began cranking my camera down. As I was on an 18mm I wasn’t getting too much depth-of-field problems from shooting at f/4.5, and with vibration reduction 1/60″ is fine for hand shake. So I took the improving light on the ISO to start with, cranking the ISO down whenever the picture started going past halfway on the histogram. This is purely a personal taste question, about the tradeoff between underexposure and noise, but I really dislike noise. Another reason to keep the picture a bit underexposed is to get better pictures of the flame from the burners heating the air

The balloon inflating is a good subject, and you can need to move quickly as it inflates quite rapidly once it gets going. I stayed on the wide angle throughout – the details weren’t that interesting, and the best shots I could see were including the most of the balloon.

After a quick scramble in for take-off we were away. I was still on f/4.5 and 1/60″, but now on ISO 200. The light is still improving, and as I was at my camera’s best ISO (it can do ISO 100, but you lose dynamic range) I was now slowly increasing the f/stop. While the depth of field on my 18-55mm lens is unlikely to cause any depth-of-field problems, the 70-300 is likely to have some problems unless it’s past f/11 or so, although it also needs a 1/125″ minimum handheld exposure.

Once moving it’s a slower experience. Try a range of different options as the balloon moves, and you’ll find you have plenty of time to try several variations on one subject.

Not too far into the balloon ride I found that the light had gotten better enough for me to start to worry less about it, so I switched over to aperture priority, and also started to play with my long lens for close ups of some of the things in the lake. I probably started a bit early, as the f-stop was still giving me depth of field problems with that lens.

Don’t forget to keep your eye out down as well as around – there were some rowers on the lake who made a very good subject on the day of our balloon ride.

Soon enough it was time for landing. To get one more interesting shot in, I set my camera to high speed, and took a sequence of photos as the balloon landed. Which, of course, I then turned into a time lapse video:

And that’s that.

It’s been a successful failure. I didn’t actually get my camera out each and every week, but I’ve done enough to fill in for 52 sessions worth. And I’ve used my camera a lot more, and learnt a lot about photography.

Am I getting any better? As an exercise I went through and graded each of my ‘weekly 5′ photos on one through five stars. It took a couple of passes, as initially I had nothing at five stars and only about six at four stars. In the end I had:

• 1 star: 56 photos
• 2 stars: 101 photos
• 3 stars: 60 photos
• 4 stars: 33 photos
• 5 stars: 10 photos

We’ll get to my top 10 for the year in a minute, but there was definitely a slight trend towards improvement: less bad photos, more good photos in the later weeks. Still, that means that out of the 3,862 photos that I took in 2009 there are only 43 photos that I’m quite or very happy with – a bit over 1 per cent. Not bad for a beginner, I suppose.

I won’t be doing this next year, but I’m going to try and get out at least once a month or so just to take photos. I’m also about halfway through making up my 260 main photos for the year into a couple of books, which I’ll pay the ridiculous charges of Apple to get printed in hardback as a memento of my year.

Would I do it again? Probably. I’d probably tweak the rules, maybe only saying ‘take 10, choose 1′. Sometimes I found it hard to stretch a subject out to 30 photos, and it was especially hard to then find 5 of those that were distinct and interesting individually. Still, that was part of the exercise as well.

So now, as the grand finale for the 52/30/5 project, my 10 favourite photos of the year (in chronological order):

So what’s in store for next year? Stay tuned tomorrow for the official announcement.

The full set is on Flickr.

A windsurfer on the lake:

A swan and a gosling:

Buildings in the Kingston Foreshore (known as the Daleks):

The lake front at Grevillea Park:

And Lake Burley Griffin looking towards the Carillion:

The full set is on Flickr.

The basketball hoop:

A nearby slide:

Monkey bars:

Ducks taking flight:

And a tower that is part of the play ground:

The full set is on Flickr.

The full set is on Flickr.

Edison park has been suffering from the drought, the normal pond has been drained and has grown over:

The wooden path to the middle of the pond:

An anchor (a memorial for something or other) in the park:

And a swing:

The full set is on Flickr.

The building:

The flag and coat of arms from the front:

And one of the car parks:

The full set is on Flickr.

Old Parliament House in HDR:

The War Memorial over the lake:

The National Portrait Gallery:

The High Court:

And the surprisingly Christmas-y local map sign:

The full set is on Flickr.

A seagull:

Birds surrounding a tree:

A cycle path:

Contrails in the sky:

A magpie in a tree:

The full set is available on Flickr.

Week 44 was taken at Telopea Park near Kingston.

The park:

A storm drain:

Some cyclists passing through:

A HDR view of a tree:

And a tree in the bright sunshine:

The full set is on Flickr.

The full set is on Flickr.

The full set is on Flickr.

First, some passing bird (not an ornithologist either):

A swan:

And the swans and their cygnets:

The full set if on Flickr.

The full set is on Flickr.

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First up, a few photos of the recent John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) building:

And secondly, a few ducks that were wondering around Sullivan’s Creek near the School of Law:

The full set is on Flickr.

A transformer on a power pole:

Someone who needs to mow their grass. The recent rain has created this problem a lot lately:

A view down towards the Fadden shops and the Fadden valley:

One of the houses with a good view on Bugden Avenue:

And the sun reflected on the road:

The full set is on Flickr.

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A phone tower:

A view down to Australia’s Parliament House:

Three Poles:

And the restaurant at the top of the hill (I don’t know the name: it changes every six months or so):

And a plant. No, botany is not my strong suit:

The full set is on Flickr.

A Detroit Electric, an electric car from pre-WW2.

A modified VW Beetle with fully electric conversion:

An electric race car:

A few electric bicycles:

And finally, a Tesla Roadster:

The full set is on Flickr.

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An elephant walking along the road. As it turns out, a bull elephant can move pretty quickly when it’s right next to your car:

Some hippos lying around:

A gnu:

An elephant herd:

And a giraffe:

The full set is on Flickr.