Red and White

Last year, me (Ben) and Elder Child took some shots for the long-running Inflate Deflate project, trying to get shots with a ball in the air with suitably dramatic landscape backgrounds.  The shots went down well (they were published, and were also exhibited), and I had a hankering to try some more this year.  A summer sale from an online site saw me tempted by a more traditional-coloured, old fashioned inflatable which I thought might look nicer than the patterned ones I'd used.

When it turned up, it was HUGE.  Compare the above to the patio furniture... seriously, this thing too about 20 minutes to pump up...

Poor weather during our week away saw us grabbing the opportunity for a very early start; partly to get a location to ourselves, partly to get the sunshine, partly to get the place with the tide out.

The lighting on the day was a bit odd; hazy cloud coming in.

It was also tricky to get the shots; this ball is, if anything, way too big and surprisingly cumbersome, and Elder Child was struggling a bit to heft it high enough into the air.  And yet for all that heaviness, it was getting caught by the breeze.

With her feeling a bit knackered, I thought I'd get some still life shots.

Almost sunset lighting.

I also had the underwater camera with me, but those pics didn't turn out massively well.  By this point the breeze was picking up, and the ball was blowing away.

I wanted to get some shots with the mountains in the background, and we started by trying to go back up the hill above Aberdunant, but the mountains were hazy and indistinct.  Plus, there was no parking up here, and I wasn't about to stand on the roadside blowing up that damned huge ball for half an hour.

So we headed back down to the bottom of the valley, and the public footpath alongside the WHR.  No doubt confusing the bird watchers and drivers passing by.  Even here the breeze was a problem...

And the inevitable happened.  POP, hissssss... what happens when you're lobbing a giant beachball around on a windy day when there's a barbed wire fence.  Four holes in the toy.

A bit of slightly desperate re-inflating, and a few more shots managed as it went flat.  It's been relegated to the props box, with a note on it to try and patch it up for possible future shoots, but really it's way, way too big as a prop for shoots or even for play.