man make pictures with light
As I mentioned yesterday, this dratted conference wanted a photo of me as well as a bio paragraph. Oh, and a topic, but I wasn't really worrying about that, I can cobble words together on the fly with a dashed sight more facility than that with which I can find a photo of myself I don't hate enough to actually disseminate. I don't have any decent, recent photos of self, on account of being incurably camera-shy as well as being completely non-photogenic. (And, weirdly enough, on account of being single. Count up how many of the good recent photos of you are taken by your loving partner).
However, the Dynamic Duo of jo&stv herded me up to campus yesterday morning, on a beautiful autumn's day, and proceeded to charm, browbeat and otherwise coerce me into a number of attitudes while Stv clicked the camera. This process revealed the following:
But this is my favourite, just for the composition:
That's me, that is. That's my Cherished Institution. I don't even look drunk.
However, the Dynamic Duo of jo&stv herded me up to campus yesterday morning, on a beautiful autumn's day, and proceeded to charm, browbeat and otherwise coerce me into a number of attitudes while Stv clicked the camera. This process revealed the following:
- I work on a beautiful campus. It's easy to take it for granted until you show it to photographers, who proceed to wax lyrical about its buildings, trees, ivy and what have you, and you realise they're right.
- Unleashing an amateur photographer is like unleashing a professional obsessive. "I need a bio pic, please" translates to over a hundred shots, in quite a few of which I look OK. I expected him to take a dozen or so. Silly me. Also, I'm grateful he didn't actually make me climb the library.
- Watching him up close like this makes me realise how many technical aspects of photography there are of which I remain blissfully oblivious as I take my own photos. Gawsh, no wonder they're not good photos.
- While I hate, hate, hate being photographed, having jo&stv clowning around does make the process at least somewhat amusing, to the extent where I'm either smiling or packing out laughing in about two-thirds of the shots. So not academic and sober. Sigh.
- These amateur photographers know their stuff. Stv selected what he thought were the best 10 or so shots out of the 100 or so total. I looked at these, did the classic "aargh they're photos of me and therefore hideous", rifled madly through the rest of them, and returned to his selected 10 having finally admitted that of course he's right, they're the best.
But this is my favourite, just for the composition:
That's me, that is. That's my Cherished Institution. I don't even look drunk.