From Ladbroke Grove, 16th June 2009

The Grand Union Canal has been a prolific bearer of balloons over the years, but this is my first on this stretch. After May's move I quickly found that Maida Vale is oddly bereft of supermarkets, so was testing the hike up to the vast Sainsbury's close to this bridge. It's a fair way for groceries and domestic essentials, but man cannot live on imported olives and patisserie fare alone.

I tinkered with this one for quite a while, trying to balance the areas of bright and dark to best show both the sunlit buildings and the family of Canada geese in the bottom right corner. Defeated by a recalcitrant histogram, I was forced to settle for the former.

Hyde Park, 31st May 2009

That last theory can't be said to apply to this, sadly. Yet another sunny day, but for once my thoughts were anything but.

From Streamline Mews, 24th May 2009

A few hours later, still a beautiful day, and a slightly more appealing shot too, despite the distance between me and my airborne subject. It had been a long hot journey on the bus from Maida Vale to this corner of Dulwich, but the heat was subsiding as the sun swung down to tree level. It was another bank holiday weekend and again the city had an air of summery happiness, and such moods always seem to bring out balloons. Or perhaps I just notice them more when happier myself.

Elgin Avenue, 24th May 2009

A gorgeous warm late spring day, but this litter-strewn scene hardly does it justice. Some float beneath Monet-esque bridges, some are swept by the sea towards fiery sunsets, some drift horizontal across the eyeline defying both buoyancy and gravity, but some are doomed to end their inflated days amongst the joyless and quotidian detritus of urban humanity. There's not a lot to redeem this image, save the notion that such shots serve to enhance the appreciation of the more beautiful.