Chaos filled the room set up for the night’s shoot. An entourage two generations deep and seven people wide managed an 18-month old and a two and a half-year old as both of them neared their evening meltdowns, scheduled for right around eight forty-five.
One of the guests, my good friend Cata, had made it a point that we finish the massive bottle of saki that accompanied my wife’s homemade sushi feast, and so the chaos in the room seemed even more amplified.
When using strobe gear, there’s a level of attention and order required to maintain some consistency between shooting different subjects. That was out the window here, and being that it was chaos with friends, I just rolled with it.
Luca, Cata’s cute blond-haired son, placed himself against the wall quickly, and I fired off a shot before he disappeared. Some other branch of chaos grabbed my attention and I briefly turned away. When I turned back, I noticed Luca trying to pull something from the air in front of him – maybe a hair, or a feather floating around the room from a pillow. He was reaching out with a pretty funny look on his face, and I said out loud, “Luca’s tripping!”
A few moments later, Luca was still reaching around in front of him, trying to get his hands on the elusive floating object. He was concentrating pretty hard, yet I couldn’t see anything there. At about the same time, his mother, Mimi, and I realized what it was – the lingering phantom image that sticks around when we’re hit with a flash of light.
On paper it seems sort of funny. But to be there to watch Luca feel around the edges of the glowing ring was too much, and I had to put my system down or I certainly would have dropped it from laughing so hard. Mimi was on the floor laughing to tears.
Who says photographing families is boring?
0 comments:
Post a Comment