Bristol Balloon Fiesta, Saturday 8th of August, awesome day out except for the beer tent running out of beer, and it taking nearly three hours to get out of the area when normally it would take fifteen minutes.

The Red Arrows flew at about five O’clock and as always they were quite simply bloody amazing, and that’s all there is to it.

I couldn’t be bothered lugging huge cameras and lenses around so I took the trusty Holga and the little Leica as well. The Leica doesn’t zoom much, so I had to settle for some wider stuff, which I think came out fairly well.

Later on some balloons went up which is pretty much the point of the entire day, so I’m duty bound to post photos of them balloons I suppose. Harvey Nichols were the sponsor so their balloon shot off first:

The rest followed a few minutes later:

I think I know which was the favourite balloon amongst the men present:

The night glow at 21:30 was fun but hard to capture properly as at ISO800 things start to go awry on most compacts, the Leica being no exception

So there you go, balloons and planes in one post, a departure from my usual stuff. In about four months I’ll also probably have the results from my Holga as well, how exciting.

A couple of weeks ago my good friend Ross married his girlfriend Jess, I had the honour of providing best man duties both leading up to and on the day. Just setting the scene here…

Over here you’ll see a post I wrote a couple of years ago with photos of our wedding rings – and over here you’ll see a post I wrote complaining about how many people keep stealing that photograph. So that’s the scene set then – I took a photo and it gets nicked a lot. Quite simple really. Oh, and there is a wedding as well.

When we sat down for dinner, I was slightly surprised to see that the wedding favours, which were chocolate bars, had a familiar looking photo on them… To prove to myself I wasn’t losing my mind I even checked my website on my phone and confirmed it was indeed a familiar photograph.

I just assumed Ross had used the photo off my website, but apparently not – the company that makes these choccies has only bleeding well nicked the photo of me, and can be added to the long and growing list of perpetrators who have committed this terrible infraction.

Which begs the question, just what are the chances that my best mate would choose my photograph from a bunch of available options, for his wedding favours, for the wedding at which I was best man? I reckon eleventy bazillion to one.

Does it make me feel any better? Well it’s flattering he chose my photo but it’s pretty annoying that this company made all the money out of it and I didn’t get a penny.

The swines.

In an unrelated note, here’s a photo of the glass roof at John Cabot’s palace of gin and piss in Bristol (i.e. shopping center). I made this photo with a phone, amazing I know. Phones are dead clever these days.