Balloon Manor

Amy and I joined our friends, Rick and Ellen Morningstar, on a visit to the Sibley building in downtown Rochester to check out an incredible display of balloon art coined Airigami.  This year's balloon manor exhibit depicts an underwater ocean scene where a giant pirate octopus is protecting its domain from a couple rival pirates from the surface.

In one of the octopus' arms is the key to a treasure chest sitting on the ocean floor far below.  Meanwhile he attempts to sink the pirate ship above by pulling on the anchor chain.  The entire balloon sculpture is over 5 stories tall and made up of over 40,000 balloons.

The scene was overwhelming and proved to be a challenge to photograph in such a way as to both give a sense for the scale of the display as well as the level of detail.  No one picture could show the entire thing and do it justice so I decided to share several shots that would convey the level of detail put into the display and the techniques by which the artists achieved the overall look.

I decided to feature the octopus shot as my lead primarily because I viewed him as the centerpiece of the display as well as the center of the chaos that it depicts.  In order to help the octopus stand out in this picture, I used photoshop to add a lens blur to the surrounding background to reduce the distraction and allow the viewer to focus on the octopus.

The display shows the relative calm of things on the ocean floor where starfish, crabs and various other sea creatures go about their business.  The surface of the ocean is another story altogether.  There are two pirates that have recently abandoned ship and are attempting to get away in a dingy as one rows and the other appears to yell for him to row faster.

Their dog is also on board the dingy and seems to be enjoying the whole adventure.  Things are looking so bad for the pirate ship that even the rats are abandoning ship and grabbing whatever floatation aids they can before going overboard.  One of my favorite parts of the sculpture was the poor rat using a life ring to escape the sinking vessel and is about to have a huge wave break over him.

The scene contained mermaids and crabs guarding the treasure chest, a hammer head shark circling the waters hoping for something tasty to drop in and a swordfish swimming nearby.  Everything from the figure head of the ship to the eyebrows of the pirate begging for his mate to row faster were exquisitely detailed.

Discovering these attentions to detail as one took in the scene was part of what made this excursion fun and unique.

I want to thank Rick and Ellen for inviting us along and treating us to lunch afterwards.  We had a great time.  For more pictures from the balloon manor visit you can visit my flickr album here.