Wish I got paid for some of this. I'd be RICH!
Gig #1. School dance.
Usually I do the photo-booth. Kids pay a dollar for a print of a photo that they're in. I print the photos for $0.09, so the school makes 90% profit.
(and the moustaches are still a hit)
I shouldn't say I don't get paid for this. My friend's son is on the yearbook committee and was supposed to go to the dance and take photos. He decided it was 'lame' and didn't go, so my friend made him PAY ME FOR PHOTOS, for the yearbook. OF course, I only charged him $20, but that stings when you're 13.
And I toyed with blackmail photography... but only for a moment. :)
Gig #2: Elementary School Musical Variety Show.
This is my last year at my kids' elementary school. Kelly was DEEP into the variety show when she was here, but neither boy has wanted anything to do with it. That's ok by me. But I keep involved by photographing it for the fundraiser.
So I photographed the Technical Rehearsal...
(really, I photograph this so I get an idea of what the various acts will involve, so I'm less likely to miss something on stage during the real event. Like this... blurry kid, but now I know what he's going to be doing on stage. of course, that presumes that the stage will be actually LIT, so we can see what they're doing during the show, but that's a different thing all together. But I digress)
And then I photographed the Dress Rehearsal...
And Opening Night...
And the Grand Finale...
And then I took my 5,000 photos, and I went home and culled and edited for three straight days and my eyeballs dried out, and then put the photos up on the school photo-fulfillment website and crossed my fingers that the school would actually make some money from this. Last year, I think they made about $1600.
The lighting stunk in the theater this year. I processed a number of shots in monochrome just to salvage what I could from a bad situation. But I had a few other shooters who got a few good shots, too, so I'm pretty sure we have all the kids covered.
Gig #3. Floating Kids
So I found this cool tutorial online from Dustin Thompson Photography, and went a little bit crazy.
Floating kids! What's not to love?
Well, it's all fun and games until you think "This would make a great Mother's Day Craft project for my friend's second grade class", so you offer to take 'floating kids of 25 second graders...
And then the 5th grade girls see you with balloons and say "Mrs Parker! That looks like fun! Can we do it too?" and you check with the 5th grade teachers, and they think it's a great idea, so you photograph 65 fifth grade students...
And then the class mom hears about what you've done, and wants to see if she can use the photos for the Promotion Ceremony. Fine... except that she's disappointed that you've not used the colours that she's chosen (IN HER MIND) for the promotion colour scheme for the balloon arch, so could you re-shoot all the kids and re-edit the photos? And you say "Above my pay grade" and she says "What about changing the balloon colors on the computer. Surely you can do that?" and you say sure and send her this:
And she says "Well, that's pretty close... what if you photoshopped graduation gowns on them, and a graduation cap with a tassel?"
And you say "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." and you go off so your head can quietly explode as you think about the hours that it will take you with your COMPLETE LACK OF PHOTOSHOP SKILLZ to change the colour of 5 balloons times 65 students.
Ah well.
Oh! Gig #4. Insect photography.
My 2nd grade teacher friend got hissing cockroaches for the class.
On Friday, I went in to tutor, and discovered that Ike (they're a pair, and all of her class pets are named after famous (or infamous) Black Americans, so the cockroaches are Ike and Tina) was molting, so instead of working with literacy, I watched Ike molt while the kids watched youtube videos of hissing cockroaches. Impromptu entomology lessons FOR THE WIN!
Before Ike molted, he was the same size as Tina. That's quite the size jump with a single molt.
I still need to go back and chat about December.
And January.
And February.
Eek, and MARCH.
But soon I'll be chatting about our latest adventures with OUR NEW FRENCH EXCHANGE STUDENT.
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