I'm taking a class on Saturdays, just for amusement. The local community college offers a class in Crime Scene Investigation, and covers topics like developing latent fingerprints by dusting, superglueing, special chemicals, etc, and photographing and collecting physical evidence. We got a photo assignment a couple of weeks ago, which included a couple sets of overall-intermediate-closeup photos of a scene.

One day last week I decided that since I had just gotten home from work and let the kitties out in the back yard to sun, I might as well join them and do my photo assignment outdoors. After taking even more cat photos (who can go near beautiful kitties with a loaded camera and not snap a few photos?) I dropped a couple pieces of simulated evidence in the yard and set about working with them.

The overall shots weren't bad. Get across the yard from the knife, call Amelia to come over by me and get out of the frame, pet her a bit, refocus, call DD over out of the frame, per her a bit, refocus, call Cleopatra over, change my position when Cleo won't move. Repeat a couple times, finally get my overall shots. Repeat for the intermediate shots. Get close to knife, drop a photo scale next to it, focus on the knife, look around to see where photo scale got off to, recover it from Amelia who is on her back about ten feet away bunny-kicking it into submission. Reposition, refocus, try to nudge tortoiseshell kitty paw off edge of scale. Pick up Amelia, put her behind me, pet with left hand while taking photo with right. Get one good shot, line up for second, see a cute grey face staring up into the lens as DD seems to say "Hey, paw, wouldn't you rather take a close up of my pretty face?". Sit down, pet all three kitties for a few minutes, get set up for second close up. Look for photo scale, find it in Amelia's mouth. Rescue the now ragged-looking photo scale, reposition, quickly aim and snap slightly out-of-focus shot just before Cleopatra wanders between camera and knife.

That's when I gave up on the photo assignment and just petted kitties for the rest of the afternoon. The photo assignment kept for another day.

Copyright © Dan Mahoney
May 3, 2003