Other side of the lens

Things have been slow here of late as I'm still not online after moving into my new house, as evidence: this coming to you from my lunch hour. Neither has the camera been out of the bag. At least I'm 90% through unpacking.

Yesterday, however, I had an interesting photo experience being on the subject side of things - for it was giant coporate photo-shoot day. Mug shots of all, cheesy coroporate poses, pubilicity shots, groups shots etc etc. A large team set up shop: couple of photogs, couple of assistants, make-up and others. Must have been a team of about 8. Three studio sets. Piles of gear. So much, so typical, I suppose. (They seem to like their photographers here - the weddings I saw going on at the hotel all seemed to have large teams for the photography.)

The interesting thing for me, hoever, were the skills demonstrated by the photographer doing our team. Kathy, judging from the name on her shirt. A very engaging young lady - chatty, lively but professional. And she had an ability to remember names - first time out and then it was personal address from there on in. Even remembered all the names from the last time (which was a couple of years ago, I gather). A little thing that seemed to make things go so much smoother and a nice touch of personal engagement to keep us unwilling victims in the right frame of mind.

Continues to reinforce how little the skills of photography are about cameras.