Bird’s eye view of Luxembourg from hot-air balloon

If you get a chance to fly through Luxembourg, the most distinctive thing you will notice about the country is that you feel you are travelling through centuries. At one moment you will be grasping the distance of the modern, lofty twin towers erected on the Kirchberg plateau and designed by renowned architect Ricardo Bofill, the next you would be looking down on structures which have been around for centuries like the Neumünster abbey and The Bock outcrop. It was this diversity that led photographer and travel writer Rob Kieffer to take magnificent clicks from the basket of a hot-air balloon. These photographs are now a part of an exhibition at The Amethyst.

“The project was full of adventure, time-consuming (over 50 hot air balloon flights) and perhaps a little daring. An entire country (even a small one with its modest 998 square miles) was to be photographed from a rather anachronistic air vehicle, that can only follow the direction of the wind. It was an exhilarating experience for me and my team to experience Luxembourg from a fascinating and surprising perspective, that only the good old hot air balloon could offer,” shares Rob. They floated over Oesling region in the Ardennes, the Guttland and Luxembourg-City in the centre of the country, the Minette area in the South and the Moselle valley with its vineyards in the East. 

The 30 photographs in the exhibition are also documented in a comprehensive illustrated book, published at the Luxembourg publishing house Editions Guy Binsfeld. “Our biggest fear while taking these aerial shots was bad weather. Since rising temperature are the enemy of every balloon pilot, we could only start in the early hours of the day or during the late afternoon. Another fear was hard, wind-pushed landings as this would have led to crashing of our photo equipment. Fortunately the passengers as well as the gear survived uncomfortable landings,” adds Rob. 

He shares that he prefers taking pictures of landscapes and people in their daily life, of their traditions and feasts. “I like to call myself a visual chronicler rather than a photographer,” he puts forth.