The Red Balloon Takes Its Turn Behind the Lens

Union Square with Trawin and his assistant manning the balloon with string in the corner ( Trawin on Flickr)

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It’s common to come across New Yorkers posting photos on their Flickrs of balloon clusters they catch drifting across the city sky. But what if the balloons began taking shots of the urban dwellers below them? This past Sunday artist David Trawin manipulated some balloons to do just that over the streets of Union Square and the East Village.

Trawin used fourteen balloons, a specially constructed platform as a holster, some heavy-duty kite reel and a hacked script to extend the time lapse feature on his digital camera, which gave the balloons time to get some real elevation. He and partner Josh Roxas then released them and took a series of aerial shots of curious onlookers down below. Trawin says that the adventure around lower Manhattan was just a test run for an upcoming balloon photo shoot of Central Park in the weeks to come.

Trawin's blog has an in-depth account of how the project came together.