Smile! I'm taking your picture

I wanted to set aside for the moment my commentary on engineering girl's ensuing fall to talk about something else that I've been doing lately. Which happens to be photography.

I've been working for a DJ company for the past six months, and it has been an experience to say the least. Since I've joined this company, I've moved from lowly grunt to all around goto guy for any critical task that must be done without error. I do everything but spin the music or direct the guests on what to do. In that time, I've discovered that I have had and still have an eye for photography.

As a kid, I received a fisher price camera that used a 110 cartridge as a birthday present. It was blue with black rubberized ends. I had received it a year or two before I moved out to Long Island. It had a candy bar style flash that fired its ten (five on one half, then you flipped to get the other five) flashes consecutively.

I remember carrying it everywhere with me, trying to decide whether or not something was worth taking pictures since my parents impressed upon me how expensive it was to develop these pictures. Especially since it was coming out of my meager allowance. I only stopped using it when the mechanism finally broke and I couldn't take pictures any more.

After that, I took a photography class where I learned how to shoot picutres using a 35 mm camera and develop black and white photos. I also remember that there was my father's very old 35 mm camera that he had bought while on tour in Europe. He had stopped using it because the shutter didn't work all the time. I tried my hand with it, but because the shutter didn't always work, I didn't stick with it for long.

While in college, I moved into digital cameras using a Sony camera that had a built in floppy drive. I must have filled hundreds of floppies with 640x480 resolution sized pictures. I even managed to sneak* onto an air field and snap pictures of the Blue Angel squadron. I even grabbed some great shots of them taking off on the runway as I stood on the service road beside the runway. All I can tell you is that four F-18's taking off at that close a range is positively deafening. (*This was many years before September 11th, so I only risked trespassing charges and I only had to worry about security, not M-16 toting MPs, if I were to be caught. Fortunately, the statute of limitations allows me to admit it now.)

There were several other cameras from that period until I started this job, but you get the idea that I've been taking pictures since I was a kid. So, we move back to the present time, where I am still taking pictures and now, I am even being paid to take them. Best of all, I still enjoy taking the pictures.

During the past weekend, I was doing what my company calls a live simulcast. I run around, taking about 100 pictures and then project them onto a video screen for the guests to observe themselves on a big screen. Usually, these pictures are displayed during slow sections of the party, like when they're eating dinner.

As the slideshow was running, I was standing next to the professional photographer the hosts had hired to capture the event on film while waiting for the cake cutting ceremony to begin. He turned to me and asked me if I had taken the pictures on the screen. I replied in the affirmative and he then said: "You take better pictures than some candidmen I've worked with."

For those who don't know, candidmen are photographers who don't pose their subjects when they take the pictures. They take, for lack of a better word, candid photos of what is going on at the moment during an event. The photographer I was talking to also did this. I saw that as a great compliment, since I don't really make a living taking pictures.

It has caused me to reconsider what I have been doing lately. For the past few months, I've been essentially killing myself to make ends meet, all the while going to school full time with the hopes of getting a four year degree. In fact, I've had an upper respitory infection for the past two weeks, and it continues to linger because I can't take enough time out to sleep as much as I would need to get back to full health.

The reason for my reconsideration is this: A candidman makes $300-$7500 (that's not a typo) a night snapping pictures and then providing either a CD with pictures or photographic prints of various sizes. Right now, I bring home, every week, a little bit more than the worse candidman does in one night.

It doesn't take a very bright person to do the math on which brings in the better pay. And apparently, my photographic instincts are good enough to be better than "some candidmen" as well. So, I am rethinking my employment plans. Unfortunately, I've discovered a financial roadblock. I've investigated the pricing of the equipment I will need to buy if I were even semi-serious about taking this path and the cost is a bit above $3500, or just about two fifths of my tuition each year.

There's no denying that I have to consider this option as seriously as possible, if for no other reason than to free me from the chains of working fifty hours a week while going to school. I am not slated to graduate until the end of next fall without any interuptions. Do I take off a semester so that I can pay for the equipment? Do I wait until summer?