Photo Video Diaries: Mike

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I’m surprised, I am surprised that we got such a finely detailed photograph. I don’t think I can add anything, I suspect, to what the other scientists have said except that the four scientists and Kate are in the lucky position of being in front of the camera and that’s what viewers like yourself, I presume, see. But what’s often forgotten is that a series like Rough Science is put together by a whole team of people, there are fifteen, sixteen of us out here, and we get the glory but really you should remember when you’re watching Rough Science that it’s a whole team effort. A wonderful job they’ve done, the preparation before we came out here was astonishing, you know, so that when we get out here life is made so easy for us scientists, well comparatively easy. But just bear in mind, you know, it’s not just four scientists and Kate, everybody else is involved too.

We’ve done photography before on Rough Science. In the very first Rough Science we attempted to take a photograph. We used a different silver salt, we used silver iodide then and we did get a, you know, I’d say a kind of an image of a key, or at least we showed it darkening. But in this programme we’ve taken it so much further because we’ve actually taken a photograph that it compares favourably I think with some of the very early photographs that Fox Talbot and Niépce were taking at the beginning of the 19^th Century. But the thing that amazes me about this is we started off with horse manure and a bit of rock, and this is a transformation, I’m always using that word, this magical transformation.

I mean that’s chemistry. I mean chemistry is about harnessing nature and I think we did in a way harness nature to get the photograph of what we wanted. The camera and Hermione, oh she’s a star, she really is a star, she’s done great again. Jonathan and Ellen, I really didn’t think the fuse would work on those balloons. I’ll tell you what it reminded me of was the Death Valley sequence when we had to, we shot a rocket up into the air and had to land an egg safely and there really was, when we shot that there was a real tension, real tension. We felt it, I hope it comes across to the viewers, and will it or won’t it work. And the way those two bags of, poly bags full of hydrogen just released and the thing came down, NASA couldn’t have done better than that surely could they, in three days.

I think it was a great achievement but Ellen and Jonathan worked really hard on it. I think we all worked really hard. And it was nice to see Kate on a horse as well.