Hot air balloon flight launches new book

A new photography book showcasing on the landmarks of Bristol has been released after a chance hot air balloon ride. After moving to Bristol to study for a degree in IT from his home town Nottinghamshire in 1972, Clive Minnitt soon found plenty of material to use for his passion of photography at the annual Bristol Hot Air Balloon Festival. Over the last forty years, Clive has taken hundreds of pictures of hot air balloons, always looking for a quirky angle to produce an amazing image and has built up a thriving business in selling his photographs. It was only last year, however, when he took his first hot air balloon flight as part of the mass ascent and had the opportunity to take photographs from the hot air balloon rather than photographing them from the ground, that he suddenly had a brainwave. Already a recognised author, having been asked to produce a photographic record of Clevedon Pier in 2008, and subsequently publishing a book on street art in Bristol in 2011, Minnitt was looking for material for his next book. Floating over the picturesque countryside of Gloucestershire and Somerset, he realised the potential for spectacular photographs from such a vantage point. The result is Bristol Hot Air Balloons, which features photographs of well-known landmarks in the area taken from the different perspective of a hot air balloon. It includes Clifton Suspension Bridge and Brunel’s passenger steamship SS Great Britain, now docked at Bristol after years of steaming across the Atlantic to New York as part of the Great Western Steamship Company’s fleet.