Lights!
I just returned on Friday from my presbytery's annual summer youth-camp. I had the honor of serving as the camp photographer. What a challenge! The past three years I came as a counselor. Last year, I helped Keil Coppes, the regular photographer, by contributing some of my digital shots for the slideshow. This year, in Keil's absence, I got promoted.
On the surface, being the photographer appeared all too easy. Taking candid shots as a photo-journalist and sharing them with others is one of my favorite hobbies. Secondly, being a photographer does not require the physical stamina of a counselor. Counselors need to endure the 7am meetings along with daily sports activities. I usually have to start running 2 miles a day, 2-3 times a week, at least 2 months prior to camp in order to be in shape enough to at least not be embarrasingly out of breath during the team sports. This year, I ran a little behind in my running schedule.
Camera!
However, I soon realized that being the photographer was just as challenging as counseling. It can be the loneliest of occupations. The entire camp world is mediated behind the steel bars of my camera lens. The photographer must lose his team identity as an impartial judge. Never allowed to join in any reindeer games, except insomuch as Referee Heisenberg says the observer is never separate from those he observes.
But my solitary confinement was anything but involuntary. I had to force myself to put my camera down, join in the lunch line, eat and play with them, lest I miss out on the joy of fellowship. The daily chapel services especially helped to redeem my soul from spiritual bankruptcy, renewing a proper perspective on the week, and motivated me to seek friendships from out behind the camera. Friends sought my company.
The most frustrating thing about the job is how obsessive photography can be around so many interesting people doing so many captivating things. You simply cannot capture it all, from all the cool angles. Good shots are slipping away all the time, even as new ones arise. Thus, I was once again reminded of my limitations as a human observer, and had to learn to humbly accept my apprenticeship under my Master Photographer Omnipresent. Unlike most flies on the wall, I only have been given one eye.
The most difficult task of the week, however, was not the picture taking; it was the picture giving. Looming over my head was a 30minute time slot at the end of the week in which I would enable the campers to re-live the entire week. Thus the countless cool shots missed from lack of omnipresence became the best friend of my want of omnipotence. By the end of the week, the confines of my stream of pictures became an unmanageable ocean, a whelming flood fit for Leviathan. Over 2000 decent photos in 6 days plus about 5 hours of raw video. A director/photographer who is his own producer/editor must be a master of sacrifice. Again, I kneel before the alter of God.
Action!
Thursday evening around 10pm, a hundred and some campers and staff members applauded my labors among them. I'm not sure what I did to deserve such acclaimation, especially since up to that point, few of them had seen any of the fruit, just a man behind a camera. I had only been able to put together movies of the first two days in time for the slideshow. The two movies brought about an enthusiastic moblike encore pressing me to flip manually through all my photos of the rest of the days, while playing through a list of songs given to me from some camper friends of mine. The camp staff graciously gave me enough time to show all my pictures for the mob of campers. But when I started skimming through my raw video footage they wisely requested that we find a good stopping point.
Lessons Learned
I would certainly enjoy being a camp photographer again in the future. I certainly believe that having more footage is better than not enough, but at the same time, the editing process is very hard when you have so much you want to share. (That's why directors like adding bonus material to their DVDs.) So, in the future I might try to get a couple of really good shots from events, along with shorter video clips, rather than taking a lot of shots and a lot of video. Video especially is hard to edit, because you must spend time watching a lot of the material to see what you can use. If I could cut down on the footage, it would save me some time producing a slideshow. Secondly, camp is not the time to learn new software. I spent too much time early in the week trying to find the right format to save my video files, whether or not to try to build a DVD project, and trying to figure out how to use Windows Movie Maker. If I would have decided upon file formats and editing software before camp, I may have had enough time to put a video of five days instead of two. If I really want to keep it simple, I would just have Windows XP do a slideshow of the pictures I want to show, and play a list of songs with Media Player. However, if you want to rearrange photos in something other than file name or time created, then Movie Maker or Power Point may be the way to go. The advantage of Power Point and Windows XP slideshows would be that you have live control over when to change to the next picture (which is good if you want to give people more time to laugh at a picture, or to clap for someone they know). Making a movie looks more professional and its possible to make a Video CD or DVD out of the material. I would also try my best to record more of the songs sung/performed during camp (chapel, talent show, etc). If you can use songs recorded at camp, you don't have to worry about copyright issues, and it helps others to remember the experience of camp and its theme and message. I would try harder to reinforce the theological theme & message of the week in future productions.
I didn't have enough time to keep track of how many pictures I took of whom. It would be nice to have an easy way to do that. I thought about making shortcuts to photos of people and storing them in a folder for each person. I didn't have the time to do that though. So, I tried to do my best to take and share pictures of everyone. Not sure if I accomplished that.
I'd recommend in the future that the camp photographer learn from the camp staff what particular things to be looking for each day as part of the staff 'show'. That way, the photographer can be prepared and know what to capture, rather than being just as surprised as everyone else (and miss some of the action). If at all possible, the camp photographer should also be omniscient with respect to the skits and talent show also. That way we can capture all the surprises for future memory. For instance, in one talent show skit, I was zoomed in too far on a certain character, when all the characters changed their leg positions simulataneously. I completely missed it.
Make sure, if you are using multiple digital cameras, that the time settings are synchronized; otherwise, when you store the photos in the same folder and try to view them chronologically, they will look out of order.
Thanksgiving
Keil Coppes for sharing his Camp Photographer Cookbook with me.
John Aaron, Collin Mirsky, Cassi Fenner & Rachel Bassett for contributing the cool, variegated playlist for my camp movies.
John Brack for shooting the skits for me.
Mike Loggins for shooting the banquet and dance night for me.
David Brack and Alan Story for helping to set up the projector for me.
Betty Brack and camp staff for organizing and executing such a great camp.
Cooks and Facility Staff for food & shelter.
Preachers & Teachers for instructing us what it means to be a friend of God and good neighbors of one another.
Jonathan Hall, Sierra Reavis, and Andrew Moody for sharing their camp pictures.
Campers for being themselves, even when they know I'm watching them.
Appendix - Equipment specifications and implementation:
Hardware
My Sony DCR-TRV38 digital video recorder and my Canon Powershot A20 served me well. Only once did I need to switch to my 64 MB backup card before the time-period expired. Two sets of 4 AA rechargeble batteries were enough to keep my camera running. After every major photo-intensive period, I'd trade out my camera batteries for the fresh ones in the charger. Of course, at night I'd also charge my batteries. For my video camera, I had a 4-hour battery and a 60-minute battery that was more than enough to get me through a day of taking clips.
My 128 MB compact flash card allowed room for 200 pics @ 1600 x 1200. I also had five blank 60min (SP) DV tapes. And I found that the LP mode on my video camera gave me an extra 30 minutes without a noticeable difference in quality from SP mode. For the talent show, I mounted my camera on a tripod, but decided to squat down with the tripod on its shortest height along the first row of seats. That, along with my 6hr battery, gave me the freedom to move around and catch the action without having to shoot over the heads of the audience.
For recording the chapel sermons, I plugged the TAPE-OUT signal from the sound system into my MIC input. I used Syntrillium's Cool-Edit 96 to record and edit the wav files.
Software
If time was both my greatest enemy and greatest friend, then my movie-editing software was his closest companion. Early in the week I had decided to go with Microsoft's Movie Maker (XP) for producing my camp video. I do not regret that decision. The interface was easy to use and not cluttered with bells & whistles. But as loading time for movie projects increased with each picture and video clip added, I realized that progress required making a new project for each day; especially, since the software would hang on me ever so often. grrr. On the day of the slideshow, I also realized that rendering time for Video-CD quality was about 3x the movie time. As a result, I managed to only fit the first 2 days into 2 movies totalling about 16 minutes (I had hoped to fit each day into 5-6 minutes, totalling about 30min). For the rest of the days, I simply had to flip through my photos manually while playing through a list of songs that I had collected for my movie projects. The camp staff also graciously allowed me to skim through 60 minutes of video tape from the first day.