Ascent

Looking straight up into a hot air balloon as it fills with light and air just outside Raleigh, North Carolina — and suddenly photography becomes geometry. Red, blue, orange, yellow, green: the panels of the envelope divide the cobalt sky into something that feels more like a Mondrian composition than a travel photograph. Shot at a local balloon festival, this image finds the abstract hiding inside the exuberant, the graphic inside the joyful. At large scale on a wall it radiates pure energy — the feeling of being about to leave the ground.