Distraction

This daylight savings time business? I'm not so into it. I've never liked the Spring Forward bit, but this time around--uh, it's not even spring yet folks!--it's worse than ever. It's light out too late, it's still dark early in the morning. Things just feel wrong in a jetlag sort of way. I know it's just one hour, but is anyone else having such a hard time adjusting?
I blame the current administration for this.

I have spent a big part of this week taking pictures (with my beloved new camera) at Hannah's school. I happened to be in the school office when a couple of people were talking about how they needed more pictures for the yearbook and I piped up that I had taken some in Hannah's classroom and offered to burn them on a disk. A few days later when I ran into the woman who is putting the whole thing together, I was asked if I'd be willing to go to all the classrooms and take some candid shots of the kids and teachers at work.
It turned out to be a terrific assignment indeed. I truly enjoyed going into all the classrooms as nothing more than an observer. I didn't help anyone with scissors, I didn't ask any questions, I didn't answer any questions. I was just there with my camera, watching, looking for good light and being as little of a distraction as possible (ignoring the temptation to tell the 7th and 8th graders--who sit in large, comfy, aging office chairs, it was like walking into some strange kind of boardroom--that this will always be with them; more than highschool, more than college, the sudden surges of giddiness as a wider world opens up, the crushing cruelties and the naked ostracism of the middle school years stick around).

Out of some 1200 pictures, about 150 are very good and a handful are very, very good. It's work I can be proud of. And it's going to be one upscale yearbook (I'm going to see my pictures in print, how cool is that?).

There was much oohing and aahing and exclaiming I love this one! when I brought the disks into the office after I'd sifted through everything, cropped and color-corrected. Good for the ego, that. One of the support staff is working on a slide show to play at the school's open house next week and I've been put on retainer for as many years as I want to keep doing this.