Saturday, 31 March 2007

Oxford Street, 22nd April 2006

Along with exclamation mark and in flight above, this is my favourite doomed balloon shot in terms of its visual appeal. I'm not a "proper" photographer, and anyway the nature of the subject makes the balloon photographs urgent and unrehearsed. But I like this shot as a photo as well as for other reasons:

1) It was the first time I'd taken such a photo in front of someone I knew since it became a project. After so long it was good to get it off my chest, and it led to...

2) It was the first balloon whose doom I heard. I'd not got two sentences through my explanation before a loud pop indicated its demise, and I turned around to see a child skipping away from a tattered piece of rubber. dS/dt>0, I guess. No I wasn't sad - it's only a balloon - I was just glad I got it in time. It could have happened many times before, but I always have my mp3 player on when out alone so any other pops would have been drowned by that, and I'd never know to look back.

I usually hate Oxford Street on a Saturday but this made it a bit more beautiful.

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