A Zeppelin in The New York Sky

New York, 2000. I remember looking up from the crowded streets and seeing it — a zeppelin, drifting slowly above the jagged canyon of Midtown’s architecture. In that moment, it felt like something out of a different century had quietly slipped into ours. I didn’t have much time to think; I just framed, focused, and released the shutter.

The composition is as much about absence as it is about presence. The airship is small, almost swallowed by the negative space of the sky, yet the buildings act as monumental bookends, forcing the eye toward the centre. The turquoise cast of the glass facade on the left and the warm brick tones on the right give a pleasing chromatic tension — the kind of contrast I often looked for when shooting on film.

Speaking of which, this was captured on Kodak Ektachrome E100VS, a slide film known for its vivid colour rendition and slightly exaggerated saturation. The stock’s inherent contrast and its way of handling blues gave the sky that almost painted quality. Grain is present but fine, a reminder that emulsions have their own texture — one that digital sensors still struggle to emulate convincingly without it feeling forced.

Exposure was fairly straightforward: centre-weighted metering, leaning towards a slight underexposure to hold detail in the clouds and building facades. Ektachrome’s narrower dynamic range meant highlights could blow quickly, so restraint was key. The slight fall-off in shadow detail in the skyscraper windows was inevitable but, to my eye, acceptable.

What I like about this frame is that it has no urgency. The zeppelin isn’t racing; the city isn’t in chaos. It’s a rare, quiet intersection between old-world travel and modern skyline, a moment that could easily have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t looked up at just the right time.