This dumpster showed up at work a couple days ago because part of the building is being refurbished and the company doing the work is called "Dynamic".  I thought it was funny because what's less dynamic than a big dumpster?

Then I hatched an idea that it might be cool if I could photograph someone doing something dynamic in front of the dumpster.

The problem was I didn't have anyone who was interested in helping.  This meant it was going to be me who was doing something dynamic.

I also didn't have my tripod (arrgh!) so I lugged a chair and some plastic crates out to the parking lot to set my camera on.  Then I set the timer for 10 seconds and kept clicking the button, running to get into position, running and leaping and whatever in front of the dumpster, and then running back to the camera to check out each shot.

I couldn't decide which looked better, highspeed shots where there was no motion blur, or slower shots where the motion was implied by the blur.  Eventually I settled on the latter.  I think the above was the best of the series.

Did I mention it was like 80 degrees and I'm woefully out of shape?  I took about 25 shots, which is essentially 25 10-second laps back and forth in front of the camera which was about 50 feet from the dumpster interspersed with lots of jumping and leaping and generally looking like a fool.  It took me forever to get my timing right.  In most shots, the dumpster ended up winning the "who is the more dynamic" contest!  In the end I only kept 5 shots.

I was completely beat.  So I took one last picture of me exhausted in front of the dumpster to get that idea across.  It was only as I was dragging my sweaty tired ass in, lugging my camera bag, a chair and four plastic crates, that I spotted four people in one of the other offices in my building looking out at me with big grins on.

Given the choice of being humiliated and mortified, or just going with it, I decided to go with it.  I set the chair down and gave a theatrical bow.  Then one of the guys watching me laughed, waved, and held up a large hand-drawn sign.  Here is what it said:

9.7

I've seen a few photos like this on flickr, and I have been wanting to try one.

This was a lot of fun to do, especially listening to my daughter giggling as I struck each pose.  Patty was nice enough to take all the pictures.  Although you only see 10 of me, there were 13 shots taken, its just that the me at the front of the car and the me at the back of the car are blocking the view of three other me's in the background.  But ten Chucks isn't bad for a first effort.  And I learned a couple things along the way (beyond the obvious: plan out the shot!)

One is, even with the camera on the tripod, it still moves a teensy bit with each shot.  I really should have set up the cable release for Pat.  Next time we try this, I will.  The other thing is whenever I've seen this shot done, the photographer tries hard not to have anything in the picture that moves... like say a car.  When I sit in the front seat, she leans a little forward, when I sit in the backseat, she leans a little back, and so on, each tiny movement creating seams and edges that don't line up as I try to stitch things together.  So either I should leave the car out of the shot, or put sandbags in the front and back as I move about to even out the weight.

But still it was a lot of fun and I liked the end result.  Y'know when I look at Vanessa, many thoughts cross my mind.  "Clown Car" isn't one of them.

You know... there's a group for everything on flickr...