Splash

Have you ever had one of THOSE days? Yesterday was a mess for me, and so now I'm just trying to chill and enjoy my Mother's Day. Since I had the enormous pleasure of eating lunch at my fav seafood place with my mom and I'm now sitting in a completly clean, quiet house doing my favorite thing (blogging), yesterday is quickly fading into a distant memory. But, I think that I need to tell the story to completly purge it from my brain.

I've been planning to photograph my kids for ages, in fact the last time was exactly 3 years ago. So I conspired with my sister-in-law to take pictures of my kids and hers as a gift for Mother's Day for both of our moms. We settled on a date, time, and location, and I even managed to go shopping for outfits for all six of the kids. So far, so good.

At the last minute, my sis-in-law couldn't come with her kids, so that left just me and my four. "OK, I can still do this," I thought. I have done dozens of portrait sessions and I've never (ok, only once) had a shoot turn out bad. Besides, it should be easier to photograph four kids than six, right? WRONG.

I absolutely can not pay attention to both my kids and my photography at the same time. So, my pictures look like I took them with a point and shoot camera-no cool lighting techniques or unusual angles, no cute expressions, just "say cheese" smiles. Uggh. I plan to HIRE someone next time. Not sure who yet, but this isn't a job that I can do myself.

But, that wasn't the bad part. No, the bad part of the day was later, at a photoshoot that I was REALLY enjoying. I'll just skip to the chase and get to the disaster-my SB800 flash, which is just about as important to me as my D200 camera, fell into a swimming pool.

It was my fault. I lost the screw which holds it onto the stand a week ago, and hadn't bothered to replace it. When I arrived at the home where I was to do the shoot, I asked if they had a spare screw, even though I was pretty sure it was a long shot. Of course, none was to be found, so I went right ahead and stuck my flash on the flash stand with no way to secure it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The girl I was photographing was my neighbor. She was gorgeous in her prom gown, and here is the last shot we got before the big splash:

So what happened was, a gust of wind came from nowhere, blowing the umbrella forward. "D", in an effort to save the equipment grabbed it. I started to say "Awesome save" but right at that moment, the flash seemed to jump straight into the air and hurl itself 10 feet across the lawn and into the pool. So what came out of my mouth was "AWWWW." I ran to the pool, fished it out, and opened it up in a frantic attempt to dry it out as quickly as possible.

I finished up the shoot without using flash, but man I was so bummed. I almost cried. No, I think I did cry, but not out loud Thank You God.

Here are a couple more images from the rest of the session. I've known this girl since she was 10 years old, and I can't believe how grown up and beautiful and sophisticated she is!

I heard somewhere that if you get electronics wet, you should dry it out for at least a week before you attempt to turn it on. So that is what I'm doing. I put it in the sun, I've put it under the blow dryer, back into the sun and now I'm leaving it on the window sill until next weekend.

Wish me luck.