Long exposure photography and balloons were not meant to go together.  Balloons move more often than a hummingbird on meth and do so at the slightest hint of a breeze.  Accidentally cough in their general direction and they’ll start bouncing around like crazy.  To quote Anakin Skywalker, “I don’t like balloons.  They are coarse and rough and irritating and they go everywhere.”

With long exposures, movement is horrible because it means whatever is moving is blurry.  And because nothing is ever easy, I think the night of this shoot was the windiest night of shooting I had during the series.  Fortunately, there were very sporadic moments of calm air and during those moments, I shot like crazy.  I shot over 250 images during this shoot and think I got 3 photos where the balloons were in focus.

What helped us a lot in keeping the balloons at least somewhat under control was that I rigged up a 10 foot pole (that was photoshopped out) to which we could attach them.  The pole needed to be in the grass to stay upright, which also explains why Courtney Cervantes (in the red dress) is walking so close to the edge of the sidewalk.  She held the strings like she would normally and the balloons had a very limited range of motion… but they did have motion.

This was a wonderfully fun shoot.  As I remarked, we put the ‘funer’ back in ‘funeral home’.  It’s a joke that works a lot better when said than written.  The concept was that someone was going to bring balloons to a funeral.  I wasn’t sure if this was because of the person’s inimitable style, because they were happy the person died or something else, but that was the concept.

As I described this to Ivins/Moravecek Funeral Home owner, David Moravecek, he shocked me by telling me that not only do people do this, but it happens so often that he doesn’t bat an eye at it.  He told me that some people bring in speakers and music and have a party.

It was Courtney who suggested the photo’s title.  My instructions to her were to look in her closet and find the single most inappropriate outfit for a funeral that she had and to wear that.  This was the result.  “Oh, I get it,” Courtney said.  “I’m like The Mistress.”  I hadn’t been thinking of that, but when she said it, it fit.