Semester 8 & 9.1

Wow... It's been two semesters and I'm only now getting back to here. I thought that if I'd have a 3 week break then I'd have plenty of time to catch up on stuff like this. No. It took me the 3 weeks to catch up from the previous semester alone... and that included rest. The end of the year is the busiest time of the year for us, starting in September, which is my wife's birthday. October is a big deal for us, especially with my wife's costume and sewing at-home mini-business. It's also the month of our anniversary. That leaves November to recover from Halloween and prepare for Christmas, including my school's finals.
Sometimes it seems like we'll never get a break. But we're always glad when we do.

This last set of finals had me running around, firing off final's shots for my photography class.
My theme was using shutter speed adjustments to create special effects for costume movie photos. I grabbed my wife's costumes and wore them, using what we learned in class to create special effects for them.

For the first set of pics I asked my photography friend to help. I had a handful of shots I wanted to get. With his help I was hoping we could nail down at least 3 different costumes. I had no idea how technical it was for real professional-grade pictures and that's what he brought to the table.
I only had so much time and he was not only feeling sick but had a performace to go to that night. He was feeling so ill he ended up not going. Fortunately, his cast was able to pull off the performance without him. It helped that it was a singing choir performance and not an acting-theater performance.

We met at our local church and used the stage's lights to get the color we needed for our lighting. It took us half an hour just to unload the stuff from his car. It took another 2 hours just to set everything up. His new wife spent the majority of the time steaming the backdrop I'd chosen to get the creases out.
Then, the actual work began.

I started with what I considered the lamest of the costumes; a hodge-podge of black clothing pieces with some of the weapons from my collection to create a type of ninja garb. At one point, for the picture to actually look good, I had to stick the back of the sheath in my pant to hold it in place. As a joke, I mentioned to the pair that was the reason why no one becomes ninjas anymore.

The first shot had me throwing sharp ninja shirken (stars) at the camera. I just lobbed them onto a small trampoline so that the camera would hopefully capture them as they fell. It scared my friend's poor wife to death, who was standing behind him, holding a mirror so that I could see what I was aiming at. She finally solved the problem by holding the trampoline in front of her for protection.

When my friend ran out of time I was paniced: we had only gotten through 2 costumes. Following inspiration, I ran around the building until I found a member of our ward who was willing to help with the last costume for the night.
He actually ended up helping me through all of the rest of my shoots and was a great help to me and my wife.

I thought I was mad at my friend for all of the technical mumbo-jumbo he made me wade through until I was able to compare my pictures with his. He then convinced me of the importance for the rest of the equipment he had. I hope that somehow I'll be able to acquire some of my own in time.