Balloon Safari
Round 7
A soft, pretty brief. Three entrants took the postcard. One asked what the word safari actually means.
Image 4 — "Safari Skies" : 3.20
The cleanest photograph in the round and the emptiest picture. Every technical box is ticked: low sun, river catching the light, elephants placed on the near bank, hippos on the far one, balloon dead centre with clean stripes. And nothing whatever happens. No moment, no tension, no reason for the shutter to have fallen at this second rather than ten minutes either side. This is the image a travel agency buys, and buying is all it asks of you.
Image 3 — "The Sky Belongs to Everyone" : 3.50
A real reversal underneath the sugar: the animals get the ride and the herds below are the ones being looked at. The depth is handled well too, with balloons receding to specks across a properly built sky. Then it drowns the idea in sweetness. A lion in a red scarf, a giraffe whose neck conveniently clears the basket, five more balloons crowding in behind, and each addition costs the picture attention. The scarf in particular drags a decent premise down to a greetings card. One balloon, one animal, same sky, and the joke would land ten times harder.
Image 2 — "The Balloon Safari of My Dreams" : 3.75
The only entrant who chose a style instead of a setting, and it pays: flat blocks of orange against that deep blue, acacias cut out in silhouette, a pale sun sitting exactly where it needs to be, and no gradient anywhere pretending to be depth. It reads like a printed poster from sixty years ago, which is a real decision and a confident one. The quiet reversal is good as well, since the lions are watching the balloon, so the animals are the audience and the tourists are the show. Held back by softness in the drawing itself: those two lions are the least resolved shapes in an image that otherwise lives on clean edges.
Image 1 — "Balloon Safari" : 4.00
The quotation marks in the title are a warning, and the picture keeps the promise. Safari meant hunting long before it meant photography, and this one puts the rifles back in the basket: two men braced on the wicker rim, barrels down, the herd already breaking into dust on the plain below. What makes it land is where you are standing. The canopy is overhead, the basket edge is at your waist, the shoulders are in front of you. You are not watching this, you are in the balloon with them, the third man up. The composition is worked out too, with both rifles converging on the same point in the middle distance so the eye is dragged along the line of fire whether it wants to go or not, and that gorgeous sunset does the rest of the damage by making the whole thing look like an advertisement. The only image this week that costs the viewer something. My winner.