The exit for Upney tube station is situated - as many of the eastmost stations on the District line are - on a bridge over the track, elevating it above the rest of the very flat alluvial plains north of the Thames on which the cheap worker housing was originally built. This gives a lovely vantage point for the occasional sights worth seeing, mostly fireworks and pollution-enhanced sunsets.
Tonight, as I was leaving the station, it gave me a clear view across the rooftops to a brilliant shaft of light stabbing down towards the park hidden behind the terraced houses from what I can only assume was a helicopter, as I could hear the syncopated percussion of blades but couldn't see the machine itself, it being well past sunset and all. I stood there for at least 5 minutes watching the spotlight, transfixed by the sight of the apparent pillar of unsupported luminescence dancing in the dark, before it occurred to me to snatch a picture of it with my mobile. All too quickly I discovered the abyss between a cameraphone and the real thing. All I could see in the display was the regular flash of a single pixel picking up the tail light on the chopper.
There was this moment of singular beauty, and it's relegated to the obscurity of my memory. I think I understood just then, just for a moment, the kind of mindset that drives photographers. What's more, sensitised by the event, the journey home became a series of still frames as my brain framed further shots. It wore off pretty quickly, but Ash, Stv, is this where you live? If so, how do you get anything else done? Why aren't you paralysed by the possibilities?
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