Balloons and Cigars

I guess the title of this should actually be "cigars and balloons" because the cigars came first.  My dad got shipment of cigars in on Friday, no, Thursday, on Thursday, and that same day I got in an infrared trigger for my strobe, which is great because I'd just been using my speedlight to trigger it before.  The trigger isn't as nice as, say, Pocket Wizards, but it more or less does the job.  A little testy, but what can you expect for $17 on Amazon?  I love Amazon, by the way, and tend to want to type it as Amazoning.  Like, amazing, you know?  Anyway.  These pretty much go in order, because first he's smelling the delicious new cigar, then he's lighting it, then he's smoking it.  The Alien Bee was off to the right of the desk (if facing it),  just with the silver dish on it.  No umbrella (-ella -ella) or softbox.  I moved around to the left to get more dramatic light.  The second image, where Dad is lighting the cigar, is a 1/4 of a second exposure to get the flame from the lighter, as compared to the other photos, where the exposure is more around 1/100 of a second.

Then, yesterday, my sister Christy (she was my zombie pinup in February and the victim in my recent vampire shoot) and I were working at the bowling alley and a birthday party left a bunch of balloons!!  I was supposed to be getting ready to go my ex-boyfriend Cryss's (we're trying to maybe work things out.  Again.) but I ended up being a little late because, well, pictures had to be taken.  We took a couple indoors so I could play with my infrared trigger and strobe.  The first shot of these is the only edited one of the set.

Then we went out to the roof, because, c'mon, balloons and open air?  Soulmates.  No flashes for these shots, just sunlight.  She did a lot of jumping around (good leg workout!) because we wanted it to like she was flying.  The first is one of my favorites because she looks so joyous and the pose is awesome.  I might edit the tree out though.  Opinions?  Christy loves the second shot, because she looks like she's landing.  Kind of Mary Poppins-esque, I think!  For the last, she was standing on the very very edge of the roof (the white raised bit that can be seen in the background of the second one) which made me a bit nervous, but it looks great!  Fly, little sister, fly!!