Happy Halloween!

So Rochelle and I are in the activities committee in our ward, and we were responsible for mainly two things in our ward Halloween party: photos, and music. Both of which had us pretty well occupied. We set up a photo booth where people could come and take pictures with their Halloween costumes on. And when they didn't come to us, we went around the room and took candids. The music went alright. We wanted to use the speakers that were built into the room, but the only way to put input into them was using a big hookup that is typically used by old microphones. Well... I didn't have one of those. So we couldn't hook it up. So I went to Radioshack to see if they had one. Nope. By this time, it was about 20 minutes until the party started and I didn't have anything ready. So I went home and got the surround sound system that mom and dad gave us when they got their new system. That stuff is heavy and it meant a lot of trips back and forth between my apartment and the car, and then from the car to the church. And then setting all those wires up takes time, and by the time the sound system was playing its first notes, people were asking for their photo to be taken. Rochelle in the mean time had been setting up the backdrop for the photo. Thank goodness for her. Otherwise the photos would have been with a plain brown church wall in the background. So I started taking photos. And I enjoyed it. But the lighting wasn't great. So I got out my brand new super-duper flash, and attached it... and the pictures turned out worse. Dang! I haven't had a lot of practice with my flash, so I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. I didn't have the luxury of messing with it too much because every photo I messed up, was a photo somebody wouldn't get. So I took it off, and used my camera's built in flash, and made sure to keep the subjects close enough to allow it to work. Well... after the line died down enough for me to mess with it... I discovered that the batteries were dead in the flash. It was flashing, just not very brightly. But once I got those new batteries in there... wow. It got bright. And what's better is that it could shoot clear across the room as long as I didn't have anything in the foreground. I didn't get to mess with the settings too much, but I discovered a couple of ways to alter the brightness of the flash while still in "auto" or "semi-auto" mode. But all and all I learned a good deal about my new toy, and didn't mess up more than a handful of photos, and those I took again later. It was fun. And you all can see the photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/taylors2004/wardhalloweenparty

Now, I have to say that not all of these photo's are mine. About half of the candid photos are photos Rochelle took with a little point and shoot. She was worried that her photos wouldn't turn out very well... but honestly, I think she does great. She doesn't care too much for the nitty gritty details of photography, but she enjoys it all the same. And she is getting quite good at it too. When we take portraits of people, she is an indispensable part of the process. She fixes the hair, gives me angle ideas, and suggestions on just about everything. And the photos always turn out much better when she is around. :-D

Happy Halloween all!