365: Putting Them All Together

So for my "final day" of my 365's, I've done a fun photo laying out all the photographs from the previous 364 days and then plopped myself down in the middle of them =D It's a really fun concept to execute, though really time consuming! So this year I decided I would do a 'making of' to show just how much work goes into this single shot! Too bad mother nature wrecked not only my first idea, but also seriously threatened (and eventually only marred) my second, so this time around was even more challenging than in previous years!

Here's an outtake, just to get everything started on the right foot!

Not that it's a bad shot, it's just so not what I wanted, and could be soo much better =P But more on that later... Back to the start of my day...

I had intended to use this great grassy hill at the base of our driveway to lay out all the photos, I even went so far as to buy loads of straight pins to stick through the photos to help them stay in place out in the elements... But then the elements struck back =P Thursday night it was clear that very bad weather was in our forecast for Friday, so I quickly scrambled to figure out some other space I could use for my photo, and after finding nothing I decided the living room would have to suffice. It's not terribly wide, but I had to go with what I had. So after laying out my trusty black backdrop, setting up a waist high stand so I could string the fabric across the den, and finding some black fabric to put over the couch that was spilling into the frame, I got started...

Since this isn't my first time at  the rodeo (it's my 3rd!) I've learned a few tricks along the way... The first of which is that to do this sort of layout in the floor, you have to set your camera up and keep it in one spot so you get the perspective right. Otherwise instead of having pictures laid out in front (or behind) you, they would wind up looking like a runway with growing black wedges around the edges. So I decided what angle I'd tackle this shot at, I went about laying out the boundaries so I could just lay the photos out inside that border, rather than having to check the camera at every new row of pictures... I used alternating colors of leftover jolly rancher candies I had laying around... alternating of course so I would make relatively straight lines =)

 

I already made sure my photos were in order, and put them back into the fabulous boxes they came in from the printer... These boxes are so convenient for letting me stay organized while laying all the pictures out =) I don't have to worry about my stack of photos falling over, since they are sorted out into smaller stacks. 

Then the fun can finally get started! Laying everything out! 

All was going pretty well, despite that forecasted rain moving in... I'm rather ambivalent about bad weather, yes I know it can be very deadly, but I figure I've survived 25 years without dying from a thunderstorm, and so has everyone I've ever known! So my odds are pretty good that I'm nothing is going to happen besides maybe getting a little wet... Or the power going off... Which, come to think of it, could be really bad since I was laying out 365 photos covering my entire living room (which is the access between the kitchen/entryway and rest of the house) and plan on having a photoshoot using at least one electrically run strobe light... So of course, the next photo should come as no surprise...

The dog went straight to his kennel after this, he had been hiding in the bathroom up until the power went out, then he got scared and was walking all over my pictures! I think lightning must have hit the line shortly after a tree fell on it, because a few minutes after the lights went out we had a major surge of electricity, causing lights and electronics we never use to magically turn on and off! I ran to the breaker box and hit the main power, and then set back to trying to get those photos lined up, my mind racing as to how I was going to pull this off now that I had no power, and would probably not get it back any time soon! 

I had to keep going though, I wasn't going to let the rain ruin my shoot for a second time! The worst of the storm passed quickly through, so I was able to open the curtains of the living room windows to let in a little ambient light, and that coupled with loads of candles gave enough light to just barely work... The result of that experiment is the photo at the top... I was losing light quickly since it was like 6:30, so after about half a dozen tries I was done so we could go search for food...

Definitely not the best, and the iso had to be bumped way too high... And even then I still had to over expose the image in post... I was just holding out some hope that the power would come on at some point during the night, and around 10pm I finally got my wish! I still had to compromise a bit on the lighting, only one of my strobes was in the house, the other was in the car, and with it still raining I wasn't going to go retrieve it... Oh well, I was able to salvage using a few bedside lamps... Not the best of the 3 years, but considering, I'd say it's pretty damn good! And what a day to remember!