Being a photographer is definitely not a glamorous job. It doesn’t really matter to me how crazy I look or what positions I have to get into in order to get an image because after all I’m behind the camera and not in front of it. Sometimes I have to stand on chairs because I’m not tall enough for the shot I want, and normally I’ll slip off my shoes because I don’t want to hurt the chair. What you don’t see in this picture is that a horde of mosquitoes were eating me and the bridal party alive. Fortunately, one of the bridesmaids brought insect repellent and anti-itch spray. Note to self: bring insect spray everywhere.
Very often you can find me lying down on the ground when I want a more dramatic angle. One downside of lying down is that when I came home from the wedding in the first picture, I had 64 chigger bites. It looked like I had chicken pox.
One of the tips I learned for getting children to look at the camera and smile when I’m taking family portraits or flower girl/ring bearer pictures is to say goofy things like, “Do you see a blue dog in the camera? Look really hard for him in the big black eyeball here and show him your teeth with a big smile.” Whereupon I will start barking “Woof, woof” from behind the camera. This always makes everyone have more natural smiles including the adults. I make lots of animal noises from behind the camera, and one time I let out a long “Mooooooooo” whereupon this little ring bearer pointed at me and asserted “Cow”. Later on I took this picture of his grandma holding him, and you can see him reaching out to me while innocently calling me “Cow”. So apparently I will be seen as cow to him for a while.
I have definitely have had my fair share of embarrassing moments. Here’s one from last week. In the picture below you can see me taking photos of a candlelight ceremony at a banquet. It was a very sober, inspirational occasion with music soaring and emotions high. The circular sign behind my back was attached to the front podium, but a few seconds after this photo was taken, I left that spot and I must’ve somehow unbalanced the sign because it slowly toppled over onto the ground. In front of everyone. No one ever mentioned it to me so hopefully few people noticed that I was the cause. I wish I could say that I’ve never knocked anything over while photographing a wedding, but that wouldn’t be a true statement…
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