jwyche | Dia De Los Muertos

Hello!

Yesterday there was a Dia de los Muertos parade in the South Valley. I took twenty Polaroids and loved every second. It's a huge photo op, of course. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a camera. Normally that annoys me, but I thought it was a lot of fun despite the constant shutter fire.

In the end, most of the pictures I snapped were of the spectators rather than the actual parade peeps. So many people were dressed to the nines and painted up like whoa. It got me thinking that there's a million ways to paint a dead face. Not one was the same. Some people only did half their face, some still had lips, some had little flowers, also. And some people were skeleton hipsters, skeleton peasants, skeletons with wigs, skeletons with jeans, baby skeletons, dog skeletons, fat skeletons, and everything in between.

I loved these two women, loved how the one on the right was pregnant especially.

This little girl was adorable. She had on a little broomstick skirt and everything. And the film was even acting all expired so she has a ghost in her heart. Oh, Polaroid bestill my heart.

Here is the oncoming parade. It was packed and I was forced to shoot a lot of these directly into the sun, but the world will continue orbit. It is all good. They were the same Aztec dancers from the Kookooee burning.

I kind of wish these girls hadn't been covering their fantastic dressy costumes with their fans, but then again the fans are cool and this is how they wanted to pose. Everyone was more than willing to get their picture taken. Oh man. It put me out even while I was happy about it. It reminded me of "This is not a photo-op". It was, but it wasn't, but it was.

Too bad I overexposed this and it scanned poorly. Everyone had all these badass old cars. I believe this is the one skeleton Elvis was driving. I wanna be in the parade next year, damnit! The theme was Slumdog River Rats, or something along those lines.

I particularly loved it when people threw candy and it hit other people in the face. And this guy was definitely wanting to hit me in the face. With some candy.

Not a great Polaroid, but yet I show you anyway. I wish I felt like making crappy scans of all the ones I took. This girl had on a pink wig and a boa, she was a dancer in the parade and it was totally neato.