Eli Wins A Photography Award
Eli entered two photographs in his local PTA chapter’s photography contest some time back. The theme was “My Favorite Place”, and the rules were that he had to take the pictures himself. Neither Wendy nor I think highly of parents who do their children’s projects for them, so we picked up one of those $5 disposable camers and turned him loose. In the end, he ended up taking 2nd and 3rd place ribbons among K-2 graders at his Elementary school’s judging, which was pretty cool. They told us that any that submissions that placed would be forwarded to the county-wide judging, but we didn’t think too much about it. Until a month or so later, when we were notified that he’d walked away with 1st place county wide for K-2 graders!
Unfortunately, you don’t get the pictures back, and we’ve apparently lost the negatives. Here’s the best that we can do to show you the winning entry; a picture.
Yes, those are his toes nestled into his favorite pair of sandals. That’s the playground slide at his school. The thing you can’t see is the open mouthed look of joy as he rode the twists down to the bottom. Every time.
IMHO, his other entry was better. It was a shot of Wendy holding her arms out in that universal “Come to Momma” stance. The only unorthodox thing was that he had completely decapitated her in the picture, which had the unintuitive effect of making the shot much more powerful. You just couldn’t see it without immediately thinking “In my Mom’s arms”.
Here’s one of my favorite shots from the awards ceremony. For those who don’t know Eli well, it will require a little setup, so please humor me a moment. Eli doesn’t get nauseus …. ever. In fact, asking him about it is akin to asking a dog to do calculus because it’s a completely foreign concept. How do I know this? Besides the fact that I’ve asked him many times, it’s because of how he expresses his excitement — by spinning around in circles. In his early years, we worried that this was a symptom of autism or something along those lines, but no more. He just loves to see things zooming by as the world goes round. Anyway, here’s a shot of him in mid-spin.
What I love about this picture is his intense expression (captured by my new toy). It’s one of those times that I really pine for a magical mind reading device. I’d take one that only applied to my children if that were all that were available, but boy would I love one of any kind.
See the rest of the pics on the album page.
UPDATE: Eli went on to win 1st place in Tennesse. From there, he garnered a top 10 showing nation-wide.
February 13th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
And you wanted an expensive new NIKON…look what you can do with the EYE BEHIND the camera. Thats what its all about anyway. TRULY A GREAT PHOTO…I hope you find the original.
February 19th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Jane,
Yeah, you’re absolutely right about the skill of the photographer in most cases making the difference between good photos and bleh photos. There are times that the gear pays for itself, though. Take for example the spinning picture above. While the older camera could capture a spinning boy easily enough, what it couldn’t do was to capture it the moment that my finger pressed down at just the right time. It invariable took several moments to collect it’s whits before fluttering the shutter, which typically resulted in missed shots. Had I tried to capture Eli in mid-spin with the old camera, you’d be looking at pictures of him in profile or even the back of his head. That’s what drove us over the edge finally.
I knew that the battle was lost when Wendy refused to fool with the fancy digital and instead relied upon the little kodak box cameras. As it turns out, they took better pictures for her because they have almost no lag between pressing the button and the shutter clicking. Also, our old camera tends to do nasty things to the color for some reason.
Besides, you just look more like a photog when you carry around a hunk of black plasti-metal about your neck