Bikes in Bloom -- recap

Here's a pictorial follow-up to last weekend's Borulj virágba (Burst into Flower) event at Hunyadi tér. I would have posted it sooner but I was marooned in a cloud of volcano dust in Scandinavia (I'm working on a post about it).

Although I wasn't at the Hunyadi do, my wife, Kristin Faurest, was. She was there in part to collect photographs for a book she's written about some of the lesser-known public squares of Budapest. She was working with the talented Budapest photographer, Attila Glázer, who took some choice snaps.

The highlight of the afternoon was a bike-decorating contest involving flowers -- a nice nexus between the horticultural and transportational aspects of spring. The subject of the top photo is Sofie (Zsofi) Jackson. Below she's with her dad, Bob. Apparently, this one's been selected for Kristin's book.

There was also this one.


And this one.

You notice how vivid the colours are? And the drama in the subjects' faces? These are two of the many qualities that are generally missing from my photos. In my work, I make publications about environmental projects, and because of this, I spend lots of time sifting through amateur photos taken by project staff in search of ones that are suitable for publication. In this era of flickr.com and digital cameras, the art of photography, in my opinion, is overly democratised. Looking over these shots by Attila, I feel vindicated in my view that photography for publications is best left to the pros.