I Don’t Know What I’m Doing…

Quite a day.
The most important news from the day should be about the A.P. Exam that I took today…but it’s not. I mean, it used to be the most important, but now it’s not.
I just returned from taking my friends’ prom pictures. I thought it would be really fun, and it wasn’t. Well, the taking pictures part was the fun part, but trying to organize about 16 people with bubbling parents around, wasn’t.

I really have absolutely nothing wrong with parents. I think they are great. But sometimes, I think they shouldn’t tag along for everything.
I’m sure what I’m about to say may be offensive, but I think it’ll be alright.
I guess I should explain this story from the beginning:

• A few weeks ago everyone finally realized that prom was coming up.
• They also realized they needed pictures for prom.
• Again they realized that I love photography and would probably enjoy taking their pictures.
• They were right.
• I agreed to take every one of my friends’ pictures and told them to tell their parents I would give them copies of the pictures when I was finished editing them.
• I told them the above statement to make sure that parents wouldn’t be there messing everything up.
• Today I arrive at the house where everyone is meeting and, to my somewhat surprise, there are parents — a plethora of parents.

Yes, so that is the backdrop to this story. Obviously, I haven’t gotten to the part where things start to make me mad.

So I walk in the door to the house and most everyone is there. Everybody is smiling, having a good time. In fact, they are having such a good time and are appreciating that everyone looks so good, that they decide to take pictures — a wonderful idea. The problem, however, is that they are inside…in bad lighting…using flashes.
I quickly tell a few people that it would be wise to just wait to take the pictures outside where the correct lighting could be administered. Of course, from the reaction of the people I told, I have no idea what I’m talking about. One of them even told me: “Lukas, all you care about is the lighting.”
Yes. That is all I care about for one important reason: LIGHT IS WHAT MAKES A PICTURE! I didn’t say that…but it was definitely on the edge of my tongue and almost spilling out of my mouth.

Anyways, at that time, I ignored the comment and moved on. However, for the next half hour or so people took horribly lit pictures with flashes that blew out everyone’s features and gave every image a strange and ominous white/blue beam.
Again, I hinted that we should move outside to take our pictures because people had dinner reservations and I had lots of ideas for how I wanted to photograph individual couples. Finally, my hinting worked, and we drove to a garden where we were planning on taking our pictures.

Upon arrival, I immediately (like any good photographer) scouted out possible places for photos and immediately found a beautiful overhang with a wonderfully textured floor. After huddling up the first group I took a few shots and, well, expected to move onto the next group. However, when I turned around, I saw about 20 parents…all lined up with their old digital cameras that take horrible pictures, signaling for me to get out of the way. I ignored this, and yelled for the next group to move into place. While yelling this I hear a parent say behind me say, “I don’t like this spot, it’s a little too shadowy.” Politely I say, “Do you have another place in mind that you would like to shoot at?”
Inside I’m thinking…”Too shadowy? Do you want everyone to have the same beam of light hitting them? Did you know that shadows add contrast to pictures? None of their faces are being hit by shadows, just their clothing, so actually this is probably the perfect spot to do this.” I guess I just really hate when people think I’m an idiot or something. I mean, I know, to a greater extent than them, what I’m doing. I know how to place certain people, how to angle my camera, what type of settings to have my camera on, and how to pick a backdrop.

Because of my reply to the person of “do you have another idea”…I opened the door for them to respond with: “Oh, yes. There is a beautiful bridge with water and we could have everyone stand on the bridge.”
It sounded good, so I trusted them for reasons unknown.

After getting the second group in, I yelled for everyone to follow me to the bridge. While I’m trying to organize some of the stragglers I hear, “Geez, he’s really taking control.” I pretended like I didn’t hear it, but again, inside I’m thinking: “Ok, I’m not yelling to get people organized because I’m trying to be a control freak. I’m not just messing with you to make you mad.” The tension inside me was building.

On the way to the bridge people began telling me we had about 10 minutes to shoot on the bridge because of their dinner reservations.

I get to the bridge at the same time as the person who so humbly suggested it, and I say: “Yes, this is beautiful, but in order to shoot them on the bridge I will need to be in the water.” I laughed. “Did you bring a boat or something?”
“Oh, I forgot to think about that. Wait, if you just step back a little, you can shoot across the water and you’ll see them on the bridge.” By stepping back a little, they meant to move about 30 yards away from the bridge where one probably couldn’t distinguish any features of the face whatsoever. They continued by saying, “With that fancy ol’ camera of yours, you should be able to zoom in or something.”
Right. With my 55mm zoom and wide-angle lens. Of course, what a fantastic idea.

After explaining two or three times that the bridge idea wouldn’t work, we moved on to a seemingly worse environment. I’m really curious as to who in the world decided to pick the next spot. This spot was just a big pile of rocks with steps leading up to a stream. Of course, I didn’t bring a ladder with me so I had to shoot everyone from beneath. Instead of seeing their faces, I got a bunch of shots going up their nose. Terrific.

This whole experience was so frustrating not only because of all the ridiculous comments and disrespect towards me and my abilities, but, most of all, because I told my friends that I could take their pictures and what they expect isn’t crap. That is what they are going to get because all the parents decided that I didn’t know what I was doing for various reasons of their own. I don’t like letting my friends down, and I didn’t have to if people would just leave things to me.