eric setter arts & photography: the blog: Things have been hoppin'!

This past weekend saw a flood of Easter activity from my neighborhood Easter celebration to one my church sponsored at a local elementary school. It saw a ton (tonne for you Aussies and Brits) of cute and brightly colored eggs and outfits with kids running to eggs and beating candy drops out of pinatas. I'm not sure where the pinata thing came from but then again, bunnies and eggs don't have much to do with Easter either so I'm not judging.

Last year I'd donned the Easter Bunny costume and character and nearly hopped into a heat stroke. I also learned firsthand that being in a costume often opens you up to a certain amount of abuse from kids although thankfully, aside from the heat that was affecting me, the only thing that really was in danger was the costume itself. In any case, this year I got a reprieve and just ate hot dogs and took photos. Much more relaxing.

The party did remind me of the difficulties of shooting underneath spotty shade. For those who don't immediately understand the challenge, lets just say that whenever there is a high contrast of sun and shade, it is very tough to get good detail in both areas. It gets easier if you're focusing in close on a face or single small person but when zoomed out and covering a larger area, you get spots blown out or in deep shadow and it tends not to capture the feel of the moment very well. This of course speaks to the amazing apparatus that is our brain and it's visual arm, the eyes. Well anyhow, the area where the party was at was filled with changing spots of light in various patterns and levels of diffusion. I was still able to pull out some decent images but it was a good challenge.

The next day saw a larger scale egg hunt at a local elementary school and that was a whole other level of crazy! There where open fields in Texas green (golden and tan that is) where children sprinted across picking up candy-filled eggs with veracity and determination. This was of course while having a blast and you could just see in their eyes what they were thinking, which is what I'd be thinking too if I were one of those kids, "candy.... candy... I'm gonna have SO much candy and it's gonna be AWESOME!!!!"

That was a big chunk of my weekend and now I'm looking forward to some proper portraits and possible business work! Here are some more photos from the weekend, enjoy!