Reunion
The first few days of my recent trip to Italy overlapped with the last few days of the Todi balloon festival, which meant I could catch up with the guys I flew with last year.
I got up at 4am to footle somewhat dozily to where we’d met before and, instead of a bar doing a roaring trade and 80 balloons preparing to fly, I found last year’s launch site full of sunflowers, the bar closed, and no sign of anyone with a trailer looking up at the sky.
I headed up to another haunt in hope of finding them there and began to wonder if they’d decided to stay in bed. Was I up before dawn for no reason?
I was due to fly the drone over a friend’s quarry later that morning so there was no point heading home, I just needed to find something to photograph in the mean time, or an open bar.
Eventually I found them back at the original bar, which did eventually open. We caught up over coffee and cake as a few more trailers arrived.
The cappuccino is, culturally speaking a breakfast drink in Italy. You can have one at any point in the day, but unless you want to look like a foreigner, or a renegade, ordering one after ten am is a no go.
Since we’ve been travelling with children, getting to a bar or cafe before 10am has become difficult, (it was difficult for other reasons before we had kids), and so getting a ‘legal’ cappuccino was a genuine and rare pleasure.
Nobody was particularly keen on flying that morning, I forget what it was that was wrong with the weather, but this meant we could chat without the hurry to get airborne. Gradually more trailers arrived and more aeronauts bought coffees and looked glumly at the sky.
Part way through my second cono con crema, (early starts make me snacky) the decision was made to get flying, as quickly as possible. This led to a somewhat frenetic launch which I happily bounced around, shooting it with the Leica and my Zeiss 50mm f/2.
I was lucky that they took off so much later than they normally would have, as I had Portra 400 in the Leica and Gold 200 in the Hasselblad. If they’d been flying as dawn broke, I would have struggled to get anything.
Theirs was the only balloon to fly that morning and when it left, it left like a rocket. Meanwhile I got to finsh my cake, have another coffee, and head out to do some flying of my own.
Cava – DJI Mini 3 Pro
Farewell
It was great to catch up with the guys again, even if it’s hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since we flew together. The flight over Todi and the photos I got to make defeated any remaining reisistance I had to getting a drone and starting to learn aerial work. I made sure to thank them for the inspiration.
I’ve had the Zeiss 50mm f/2 for a while now, not quite a year, and it continues to rock my world, I love the smaller, lighter form factor that it gives me, and its sharp contrasty images are sublime. I like it so much that I’ve finally, parted company with the 7Artisans 50mm f/1.1 that it was supposed to replace. To be honest, I’m still feeling some separation anxiety, but that’s because I don’t like parting with stuff.
I feel like the Leica and I have hit some kind of simpatico, the work above suggests I can finally trust it and myself to shoot actual reportage with it. I’m wondering whether, while I’m feeling said separation anxiety, it might be time to have a clear out and to double down on the Leica side of things, we’ll see.
Storm in a Negroni Glass
Rockwell Moment
I don’t have affiliate relationships but it might be useful to know that I get my cameras from London Camera Exchange, my film comes from Analog Wonderland, and Silver Pan Lab do my development and scanning.