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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