My previous video and article
included decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and even a smattering
for Christmas. For this touring, I saw a few decorations that served
dual-holiday purposes, the residents having creatively adorned them. Got
most of the images from a few days of drive-byes. Surprisingly, seems
fewer places had decorations than previous years.
Most decorations I imaged were inflatable balloons, which included
Santa, snowmen, reindeer, penguins, a few dogs, live white-tail deer,
... Many goodies images were of candy canes and red/white or green/white
round mints.
One video section includes a collection of Halloween/Christmas
visuals that I culled from other clips. Look for these items in the
neighborhood sections among the more obvious Christmas-theme figures.
Happy touring! Also look for Halloween/Christmas in my blog and YouTube channel.
Halloween this year was on a Thursday. I incorrectly guessed that
people would keep their Halloween decorations into the weekend. Besides a
few people having already started taking in items, a few balloons were
deflated.
Imagining I might take good daytime images, initially hoped to
capture more striking nighttime versions. Having less stamina than in
the past, and also seeing dismantling of decorations lessened ambition
for an evening pic excursion.
In the last day of movie-making, I shoehorned a few clips and pix
from the rest of November during the rest of November. Look for a li'l
Thanksgiving and Halloweenish Christmas peeks.
Lesson learned for 2025—take pix and videos a few days before
Halloween (daytime for one session, nighttime for another session).
Amazingly, I've recorded five years' worth of Halloween decorations
nearby. Some sites are familiar, although these homeowners tend to vary
their scenes with some prop change-outs or rearrangings. Decorations
didn't pop up plentifully until about a week or so before Halloween;
most of them gone only a few days afterward.
This Halloween felt like a return to pre-pandemic normalcy. In 2020,
several decorated houses put up social-distancing tables for handing out
their goodies to trick or treaters rather than wait for doorbell rings.
The video includes scenery from 25 houses, most taken on October 30
and 31. All pix and videos were during day time. (This year, I passed on
night shots and recording.)
I noticed mostly balloons for props. Skeletons and disjointed
skeleton bones were prominent. A few ambitious sites showed a ghoulish
scene, a pirate ship theme, graveyards with tombstones, .... The video
closes with a turkey emerging from a pumpkin to hail (?) the coming of
Thanksgiving.
A couple of months ago, I met the owner of a house that I had taken
pix and videos of for occasional years for Halloween and Christmas. The
family was getting ready to move; I said I'd miss the holiday
decorations. I offered to send links of YT videos and pix that featured
decorations at the house. In poking around my files, I discovered my
unprocessed stash of 2019 Halloween images.
I've posted Halloween images for 2018, 2020, and 2021. I'm late for putting out 2019, but I might as well complete the set. Hoping to be more timely for 2022.
The pandemic came early in 2020. The images I captured in 2019, imho,
convey more carefree times with no inkling of the coming year's pall
and caution over contact during Halloween. The video includes scenery
from 25 houses, mostly whimsical. I went on a tear on October 31, 2019
with total of 50 pix and videos. On a few other days of recording and
pic'ing, I was less ambitious.
It's gotten to be a tradition with me to wander/rove around to find
Halloween scenes. This year, I decided to video-record the sites. In the
past, I've been more likely to take still images and some videos. I've
learned to embrace recording because of panoramic views, easy zoom and
pan for size and location references, and winds that provided visual
effects. View the video.
I made the rounds to the 21 sites a few days ago. (Last year, I'd
stretched my touring days out and even collected some just before trick
or treaters would start their haunts.) Seems many of this week's stars
are skeletons and inflatable balloons (big'uns!) Goodly amount of
small-scale tombstones.
How short was the tracking? About 16 minutes and 1/4 mile of deer path. Followed a pack of deer and shot five clips on 11/23, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
I found it amusing that the first clip showed decorative spider webbing among the foliage. That resident actually managed to remove it before Thanksgiving day. (I appreciated the web decoration serving as a visual cue for timeframe.)
During my deer pack follow, additional items of interest were a couple of balloon arrangements. One was a sitting turkey (on a straw cushion), another one was a group of smiling jack o'lanterns beside a sitting turkey.
Interestingly, the jack-o'lanterns were dual-purposed, having been around for Halloween and kept in place for Thanksgiving.
While I reviewed and edited items for creating my video for including the inflatable balloons, I decided to also work in a couple of deer images from just before Halloween. One pic has a fawn and doe seemingly playing peekaboo with each other, to the right of a Halloween skeleton.
The other pic is a composite of a buck. Lucky for me, I happened to have had my camera with me during this car trip. BTW, almost all my image captures are on foot. (Video clip frames vary slightly from the stills shown here.)
My video featuring the deer pack includes the following sections:
Web-strung foliage at a house, deer pack ambling away
A close deer trio moving from my left to right
Pack starting to cross street and apparently doubling back halfway
Pack deliberately trotting across street right to left
Pack ambling away
Halloween/Thanksgiving pic potpourri near 11/23 timeframe
The potpourri section includes a few Halloween and Thanksgiving images for timeframe reference. (I really wanted to include the timeframe-proximate regal buck and peekaboo deer.) For more articles about deer, enter "deer" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "deer" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section). BTW, additional deer videos are available at my YouTube channel.
My profession had been technical writer/editor. Through TheWriteJob clublet (blog at http://thewritejob.blogspot.com), I have been exploring my inner creative writing, which includes mostly language enlightenment, entertainment, and a-muse-meant. Over time, I have become more active with images and my YouTube channel.
