I had something of an epiphany last night about taking pictures.

It was late and dark and I was extremely tired. I put the camera on a tripod, and sat in a chair just looking around, for anything, any possible subject for a decent picture, in the low light that was available to me.

And as I sat there, just looking, and thinking, I noticed the RC cars sitting on the table. Please ignore the rest of the crap. Somebody really ought to pick up this joint.

The cars made me think of a photo I had seen of matchbox cars strewn on a table. It was a great photo, and it made me the nostalgic for the days of toys like that. I snapped out of it, though, because I like having big kids. They can be smelly and loud and obnoxious, but they are funny and independent and life is physically so much easier.

I started to see what I could do with capturing those RC cars, but it was just not happening.

At the high school basketball games, when the visiting team has the ball and they are just passing it around, without taking shots, the student spectators start to chant:

BOR-ING BOR-ING BOR-ING BOR-ING

That’s how I was feeling about these pictures. I won’t even bore you with everything I tried. Because they were:

BOR-ING BOR-ING BOR-ING BOR-ING

And then I sat the cars and the camera on the floor and tried for closeups of one of them.

And then Will sat down at his laptop on the couch.

And then I had a picture that tells a story:

I know I won’t always hit the mark, but now I will be looking for stories to tell, rather than just looking to take a picture.

Today was the last day of the 1st semester. 7th grade is HALF over. HALF. Crazy.

The basketball season only holds 5 more games, which is hard to believe, too. Tonight’s game was a loss, but it was a “good” loss. The first time they played this team, they lost by, like, 20. Tonight, the final score was (I think…) 36-29. And they completely shut the other team down in the 4th quarter. They used a different defense, it and worked like crazy. They have made a ton of progress this year, and are really working as a team, which is exciting.

Today’s picture is a shot of the teams’ feet while they were over talking to the coaches during a timeout.

I saw this kind of shot from another photographer on Flickr. I really like the reflection in the shiny floor.

Will and Joe are the two black pairs on the right, Mark is the pair of khaki’s on the right.

With the end of the semester comes the start of a new semester — we have been processing schedule changes like crazy, and at one point, I called the guidance counselor and she said “Are you sane?”

Not in the least.

Students have through Wednesday to make changes, but hopefully we are almost at the end of that tunnel. Then, I get hit by the Report Card Train.

The photo prompt for today is FLAKES.

Well, there are exactly ZERO snowflakes on the ground here in Iowa, so I naturally thought of the boys.

Only, that seemed too obvious. I was paging through photos on Flickr and saw a photo that was really cool, so I talked the boys into experimenting with light painting with me. We are very new at this, and need some more practice, and technique refinement, but we did have fun!

My favorite is this one:

Will outlined Joe from behind with the flashlight.

Joe’s favorite is this one:

He wanted to look like he was headless. I just shined the flashlight on him from in front.

It definitely takes some thought and planning, and in some, we could have set the shutter speed longer, because we didn’t have enough time to complete whatever we were drawing.

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(38 Photos)

I’m going to definitely remember this technique for future photos, though, because I can see where this would come in handy on a night when it’s late and the light is gone — light something with a flashlight!

(I know, you are thinking…why don’t you just turn on the flash if it’s dark? Well, I’ve become quite opposed to using my flash, because it is so harsh. My photos are generally TONS better when lit with external light sources…when I can…sometimes the flash is the only option, but having this flashlight trick is going to be useful. Of course, it requires a really long exposure time, so it’s not meant for action shots…)

So…what did we do? I set the camera up on a tripod, and I put the camera on manual mode. I set the shutter speed to anywhere from 15-25 seconds, some of the shots we could have used 30 seconds, some could have been done in 10. We had a flashlight and someone would just stand up and draw something in the air, turning the flashlight on and off as necessary while the shutter was open.

In the shots where the boys move or are both in the shot, I flashed the light on the one sitting, turned the light off, they moved, then I turned the light back on.

There are a ton of really cool light painting photos on Flickr. Several of the things I tried were inspired by photos from that search, and I can tell I will have to come back to this gallery, and this idea again!

The second semester starts on Tuesday, so I’ve been having conversations like “No, you cannot change your PE just because your friends are all in the other section” or “No, I can’t make that change, because I checked with the guidance counselor and she said that she had already told you no.”

And after a busy day of processing the changes that we did make, I was the supervisor in charge of the junior high basketball games tonight — and there were 3 games, so that excitement started at 3:45 and we got home at 8. Phew.

I just posted on Facebook: I’m so tired that I almost stuck my camera memory card in my mouth, instead of the cracker that I had in my other hand.

I still need to do some more work on the right settings for getting good clear shots at the basketball game. Plus, those darned kids need to stop moving around so fast. I was never aiming at the right place at the right time.

The Redhawks won all 3 games, my 7th graders won 40-14! It’s nice to see them have some basketball success, they didn’t have much luck when they were younger. It helps that they are starting to get taller…

People are always asking me how do I tell the boys apart? I’ve posted about this before: up close, they look different enough that I think it’s obvious, but from a distance, even I can’t always tell.  Thankfully, in sports, I can rely on their jersey numbers, the only reason I know it’s Will in the picture is that it’s number 11.

Two posts tonight, because the stories are different, even though they are both vaguely related due to the basketball connection.

The 7th and 8th grade boys played a single combined game tonight, and won. I think the final score was 36-30, but they zeroed out the scoreboard super quick before I could snap a picture of it.

I was experimenting with my zoom lens, and have some ideas for better, crisper pictures next time. I had set the camera on Sport Mode, but next time I’m going to put it on Shutter Priority, and choose a really fast shutter speed for all of the shots, instead of letting the camera decide what to do.

I wish I had been down lower in the bleachers, this would have been an even better shot from a different angle.

Most of the time, it seemed like whatever kid I was trying to take a picture of had his back to me.

Here, though, Will is facing me, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what had happened that caused this expression:

I think my favorite shot, though, is this, with a fast shutter, that froze the ball mid-air:

Will’s on the court, Joe’s on the bench, and Mark is there, too.