As hurricane Wilma rips across southern Florida, my little house in Duluth is reaping the rewards of not being in southern Florida. It’s a beautiful morning. The temperature is hovering around 45, the sun is just coming up, and there’s a very nice breeze kicking things around outside and fascinating my cats, who apparently like the cooler temps as much as I do.
The younger of the two (“Boo”) has been busy expressing her joy over the last few days by barfing all over the house. I’m so glad I cleaned the carpets last week. Guess I’ll get to do it again tonight.
I set out to film a high school football team last Friday night, the result of an invitation by a parent of one of the players at Brookwood HS who is also the parent of a player at Furman. She convinced the Brookwood booster club to pay me to take pictures of the seniors on the team (it was “Senior Night”), and also asked me to stick around and shoot the rest of the game with an eye towards selling “action” shots to parents of players who wanted them.
I was a bit leery of doing this – particularly if up-front money was involved – because I’ve historically had very bad luck shooting this team. This is in part due to the fact that – like most high school teams – they play at night, which makes “action” shooting pretty difficult. High school stadiums are rarely equipped with the kind of lighting that I’ve gotten used to shooting night games at colleges; and the addition of a commercial grade flash, while helpful, hasn’t done the trick for me on the few previous times I’ve shot this team. They also wear dark uniforms, which doesn’t help things at all.
So we negotiated a ridiculously low price ($100) for the “posed” senior pictures – which would take place on the 50-yard line before the game in relatively good light – and then I got a player roster with indications of which parents would be most likely to want action shots. I told my contact that I’d make the pictures available on a best-effort basis, and that I reserved the right to tell hopeful parents that I just didn’t get anything good enough to print.
Fantastically, I got to see first-hand how much I’ve improved since the last time I attempted to shoot a high school game. I actually managed to get a good number of decent shots and setup a website yesterday with thumbnails and ordering information for parents who are interested.
Now, as they say, I can sit back and watch the money roll in.
On Saturday, I drove up to Greenville and shot the Furman vs. Elon game, flushed with excitement about my chances because of the successful Friday-night game and because my pictures from last week (at The Citadel) were among the best I’ve ever taken.
On the positive side, Furman clicked on all cylinders and blew Elon off the field (45-6)…meaning that they’re good. On the negative side, Furman clicked on all cylinders and blew Elon off the field (45-6)…meaning that I was pretty much bored silly and took some absolutely terrible pictures. Early in the second half, the reserve players started coming into the game, so I spent a lot of the afternoon shooting them – I’d gotten a request from one of their parents to do so a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t spent a great deal of time seeing what I got, but I’m hoping that the parental enthusiasm over seeing little Jimmy get to play will overshadow the fact that my pictures of little Jimmy are blurred, poorly-framed, and lack any type of excitement.
I’ve almost finished painting my office (a spare bedroom), and – while it isn’t exactly what I had in mind – I think it’s going to look extremely cool. I’d intended to paint the wall around my fireplace with a deep maroon color. My furniture is black leather, my fireplace is black, and most of my throws and pillows are maroon…so I figured a maroon accent wall would work out well.
At the last minute last week, I decided to paint my office maroon instead – sort of a formal, studious color, right? So I took the gallon of paint that I’d purchased for the accent wall, got two more of the same color, and started in on the office.
It ain’t maroon. It’s bright red. At least it was after the first coat was applied. The second coat darkened it somewhat, but it’s still more red than maroon. The third coat verified the fact that I’m going to have a red office. But I think it’s going to look very nice once I paint the ceiling and trim (white). Then it’s back to the Home Depot to find some MAROON paint for the accent wall around the fireplace.
I’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning, painting, and eating beans this week. And enjoying the cool weather, of course.
Gas prices this week, incidentally, are hovering around $2.65. Too expensive. Why can’t manufacturers REALLY start to explore hybrid technology?
Later, all.
TWD