Noah's Site

Christmas Ban­quet. People were talk­ing about it since mid-​October, making it out to be the big event of the semes­ter, which I sup­pose it was, though I saw it from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive: a photographer’s.

In case you didn’t know, Christ­mas Ban­quet is a big dinner that hap­pens at the end of Novem­ber. The guys ask the girls to be their date for it, often with elab­o­rate pro­pos­als. I was not one of them, since I didn’t ask anyone, despite my friends con­stant hound­ing of me to ask some­one. But I didn’t relent. I was plan­ning to take pic­tures during the event, some­thing would be made much more dif­fi­cult by having a date. During the whole month of Novem­ber, I had to endure con­stant prod­ding by well mean­ing friends to get a date, while at the same time hear­ing about the people that others had asked.

They started sell­ing tick­ets on Thurs­day, Friday, and Monday. And I man­aged to miss it every single time! I asked Mr. Bryan about what to do, and he made arrange­ments and I got a seat! I asked him about which camera I was get­ting and was delighted to hear that I would be get­ting their top end stuff: a Nikon D300 with an 80-200mm f /2.8 lens!

For Christ­mas Ban­quet, we’re expected to wear a suit, which I had bought before school. I’ve never worn a suit before, and it was a bit uncom­fort­able. But I lived

Along with the camera, I also got a flash, which was pretty much a require­ment for the low light (think roman­tic camera light), and a mono­pod, which allowed me to shoot at 1/40th of a second and get a sharp picture.

Once I had given the camera back to Mr. Bryan, I could safely say that it was one of the most enjoy­able pho­to­graphic expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had. The sub­jects were inter­est­ing both on stage and off, I didn’t feel lim­ited with infe­rior equip­ment, and I got great food to boot!

I took 414 pic­tures at the Ban­quet, so it might be some­time before I actu­ally get some up here. I’m also work­ing on a redesign of the site which will, at best (mean­ing highly unlikely), go live before the end of Christ­mas break. Here’s a teaser:

Tomarrow’s my birth­day, so I’ll be feast­ing on banana bread all evening!