Around Easter, I happened to have a camera on me when an airship was passing overhead, and managed to take a couple of pictures before the camera batteries died. But they didn’t look quite right, and eventually I realised that it was because the airship was too red. Everybody knows, at least subconsciously, that airships are always silver grey; in fact, they probably should be photographed in black and white. So I used Photoshop to turn the airship into grey and the photograph into black and white. It looks much better now!

The black line could almost be a bracing wire on some Sopwith biplane, straining to reach the raider. Sadly, it’s just part of the tram power distribution system.

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28 June 2007 at 9:24 am
Fiasco da Gama
I love it when documentary photographs submit to an aesthetic, it makes much more sense than the reverse.
I don’t see a biplane string, by the way: perhaps I’m showing my age, but I see a tracer line in 1991-era nightvision green, rising up from the ground.
29 June 2007 at 2:32 pm
Brett Holman
That could work too! There was also a pole in the original photo, which could have been a wing strut, but it was at the wrong angle so I cropped it out. Anything for the aesthetic …
3 July 2007 at 1:36 am
david tiley
It is actually a flying television set. What would the great Count have thought?
4 July 2007 at 1:59 am
Brett Holman
He probably wouldn’t have approved. But I suspect Dr Eckener, the guardian of the Zeppelin legacy after the war, would have approved, he was more of a showman and an entrepreneur than the old count had ever been.