Kumasi, Ghana

so...

 

to say the explosion threw me out of bed would be a bit of an exaggeration but i got up just before dawn seriously questioning the structural integrety of my hostel. looking out from the third floor balcony i saw what would be the nearest approximation of hell i'm probably going to see (i hope!). at least three very huge and very seperate fires were raging across the nearby neighbourhood sending intermittent fireballs into the sky and rendering it near daylight. the closest was about 300 yards away so arrived here to take a better look and lets face it get some cool photos.

 

opinion on the ground seemed to be that the driver of this vehicle had fallen asleep and crashed and somehow the first explosion set off the oil depot at the nearby train station and at least one other mysterious site. no, i dont really understand it either.

 

now i thought this was as close to the tanker as i was prepared to get (kudos casual observer man on the left) but right after i took this pic a policeman decided to grab my camera off of me and walked towards the officials by the fire truck that was parked literally just off camera left! official looking people taking my camera is not a new phenomonom and the first rule is always follow the camera so at one point i was standing about 5 metres from the bloody fire arguing with a policeman while my back was getting very crisp. when he realised i wasn't going away and he had nowhere to stash the camera i managed to get it back but wasn't able to go wild getting the 'perfect flaming body' shot after that unfortunately.

 

ACR: The original is very blue. What with the excitement and the fact that i'de just bought this camera the night before, it was set to tungsten white balance which really doesn't suit dawn light. apart from fixing that and a slight exposure increase not much changes at all. nearly posted it black and white but feel i just managed to revive enough colour for this to work.

Done