Currently, I claim micro-photography status. Don’t confuse this with macrophotography as I truly don’t have a lens with the feature and my interest just doesn’t lie in that facet of photography…yet. I say micro-photography in the same connotation as micro-brewery should be viewed. I don’t have the infrastructure or personnel to do elaborate photo assignments in the same matter that a micro-brewery couldn’t start shipping to a nation full of customers. The tools and automation to support shooting 500 school children in a single day and the delivery system to provide parents the options of 7 different photo packages are significant and the experience necessary for that kind of scale is learned over a period of time. What I like to do in my micro-photography world is set up small assignments with a lot of flexibility given to the photographer on the day of the shoot. Here’s an example.
About a month ago my neighbor, the Vice President of the Parent Teacher Committee, had a fantastic idea she shared with me. Since our school is being split into another and many of the students and faculty will be moving, she wanted to do a special photo session of each class and present the final product as a teacher appreciation gift. She’s seen my landscape work of Lake Olathe in charity auctions and inferred my skills were not of a photographic newbie, but I’m fairly certain she had made the assumption that a good landscape photographer is a good group portrait photographer. I’m curious if she knew that tidbit if she would have offered the gig to me, but little did it matter as my excited acceptance of the assignment sealed the deal! The teacher appreciation gifts would be an awesome experience gainer and give me a manageable level of exposure. There was no haggling over price or deliverables as I instantly claimed my sitting fee would be waived and unframed 8x10s of each class would be provided at cost [at the time of writing this was $1.99 each at MPix].
The great thing about providing photography services for free is the amount of control over the project—almost complete control, and the tolerance of imperfection to process. For instance, when on a family vacation I cut the old time photographer little slack when she had six customers in line and didn’t even acknowledge any client except the one she was taking pictures of and then had the audacity to continue ignoring every client until the pictures were printed and the bill was paid in full. Going into this project, I was going to miss some steps so I definitely wanted to over communicate this fact when we agreed to do an outdoor shoot on the playground. I proved this a few days later when I called to ask about one more enhancement to the photo—placing the teacher’s signature along with the abbreviation for the school and the year into the final product. She loved the personal touch for enhancing each photo and the last loose end of the deal was tied. I was about to do my first group photo session with exposure to all my kids friends and the chance to gain some valuable experience.
The decision to take a vacation day to do “volunteer work” made with my spouse was easy and her volunteering to write my exposure numbers down and track which numbers went with each teacher was very useful. The VP agreed to bring each class to the playground and return them upon completion meant the difference of complete chaos and a controlled photo shoot.
One of the personal goals for this shoot was to only use manual mode on my camera, which I did accomplish for the first time. I thought posing would be difficult, but engaging each class and making the typical photographer jokes proved successful. My favorite one liner when one of the kids is just not smiling is to shake my head in disgust and yell, “Hey, kid in the back, get your finger out of your nose.” This would buy me about 1 second of smiles and a three second opportunity to get a decent shot. Be ready as those four seconds are your last. No matter how much you are tempted do not try this joke on the first shot as your resulting images will invariably have a kid with his finger half way up his nose.
After a solid day of shooting 23 classes I knew I would face a few hours of post processing to scan the images of the teacher’s signatures, to select the best image and PhotoShop them together into the final image. I cropped each of the photos while in PhotoShop and my post processing consisted of the additional step of cropping the images into the 8x10 format. After investing most of the day I decided for one more final touch, I would print proofs (4x5s) and go through each of them with the VP and confirm the final order. Presenting them in this manner gave the VP one more idea, to compile the proofs into a binder and present them to the principal as a picture memoir of the year. After confirming all the proofs I got a little lazy and only printed 21 not noticing that I missed a couple. This was quickly rectified with a reorder and I ate the cost of postage for my mistake. Like I said earlier, the tolerance for mistakes is high with volunteer work and no reputation loss was incurred.
The week after I delivered the portraits they were framed and give to the teachers and the principals gift was on display for everyone to see. Many parents and teachers alike had positive comments, and I’m told that even one teacher shed a tear. In retrospect tracked how much time each step of the process took and the costs associated with the shoot. The document linked below is to that document. In summary I like flexibility, the opportunity to gain experience and to learn from my mistakes while making a difference in the lives of others through photography. The success of the teacher appreciation shoot has been told by many neighbors and has resulted into multiple photographic requests from both the school, scouts and friends.