Thursday, April 21, 2005

Daze of Confusion

Typical day at work--get up at 8 a.m., get to work late. Check e-mail. Check e-mail again. Read the newspaper (this is billable time, by the way). Check e-mail again. Crisis. Crisis averted. Crisis. Check e-mail. Crisis averted. Lunch. Afternoon--looks a lot like the morning.

Well, today wasn't a typical day at all! To start, we had a photo shoot at work, which is basically a lot of standing around watching a photographer work, suggesting shots and lugging equipment around. We did a "moving" shoot--in other words, no studio. The photographer and his assistant would set up and tear down lights in actual classroom space, which means we got to be the target of student jesting, hamming it up, and sometimes pleased embarassment (sp?).

Some thoughts on photo shoots--it's interesting how different someone can look on camera. We took pictures of one student in the library, who seemed pretty, but nothing out of the ordinary. On film, she looked like a different person--changed, somehow, the camera brought out beauty in her that I hadn't seen, that maybe wasn't visible, just by looking at her. It was a strange experience.

Also, seeing how people react to the camera is a source of fascination as well. Some people can't concentrate on anything else--this includes some of the professors in the rooms we were shooting in. Some try to resolutely ignore it. The ones that can't are the interesting ones--you can tell they're always thinking about where that camera is, what it's looking at, who it's looking at.

Anyway, today was a day out of the ordinary--something I'm grateful for.

Check e-mail.

2 comments:

ldmiller said...

Yes the camera has such an effect on people. I remember running into this problem quite a bit in my psychology readings as it would mess up experiments to the point they were null and void. I am adding you and Tony to my morning internet routine of Foxnews, Drudge and ESPN. I hope this spurs more genious from you!

Anonymous said...

What happened to the Pacers??? Tell me this series is going to get better than that chilled out excuse for a game last night.