I was supposed to have a photoshooting this weekend in Vienna, but we canceled it because of the weather. We planned to shoot at a very old amusement park with a classic old carousel and our plan was a dark themed shooting with black balloons.
So we canceled it on Friday, but I had already ordered the black balloons. I picked them up anyway and wondered what I should do with them. At the same time, I had just picked up a different car, which was a Mercedes Benz SUV. The balloons were in the back and I didn't want to just throw it away without at least taking some pictures. But with the weather being rainy, I didn't know what to do. Finally, I thought that I could put the camera on the tripod and then put them both in the back of the SUV with the back door open. This way, the camera would be protected from the rain and there won't be a glass window in front of it.
Somehow, driving a black Mercedes Benz made me want to wear a suit so I thought that might look cool with the black balloons. I went home, wore my black suit with a black tie, and drove around looking for an abandoned road. The best shot would have been in the woods, but I already learned my lesson about parking my car on the mud. So the road I found turned out not to be so abandoned, but it did give me some time to take some shots in between cars driving by. I'm sure they were totally confused and wondering what a guy wearing a black suit and carrying black balloons is doing in the middle of the street in the rain, with a Mercedes Benz parked on the side of the road.
I wanted to use my remote control to take the shots, so I wouldn't have to run back and forth. However, the battery on the remote was weak and it wouldn't take the shots. So I had to use the timer instead. I must have run back and forth 20 or 30 times. Working by yourself, in the rain, while carrying half a dozen black balloons is not exactly the ideal working condition. But I did it. With each passing car, I pressed the button, ran a few meters down the road, and tried to pose with a somewhat interesting look just before the camera would take a picture. It was work! And the balloons in the rain with some light wind aren't exactly the best props to work with.
I setup the camera to autofocus but I learned quickly that it was hard for the camera to pick me up because of the balloons. So after a while, I decided to set the focus manually and then run to the spot where it was focusing. Of course this took some time and my patience began to run out. At some point, sanity starts to set in and I was wondering what it was that I was doing in the first place! But I just needed one or two to look "cool" so I continued.
Anyway, sometimes you just have to do crazy things like that. Even though it was raining and we canceled the original shooting, it was good for me to do something spontaneous. I did what I could with what I had at the moment and made lemonade out of black balloons.
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You can click on each image to make them bigger. These are some of the funnier ones:
Some of the cool ones I think. The "dots" you see are raindrops. Click on the first two images to see them up close.
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