A Club, a Compass, and a Child..or Two

Last weekend my facebook photo club made of all local photographers played a game of Photo Poker.  The way it works is the first person posts a picture with two elements in it...say a flower and pearls.  The next person has to use pearls and something else in their next photo.  

Which lead to me asking my husband how to locate and unlock our bullets.

And taking pictures of random objects like globes and our fabulous new Chinese stacking blocks (a generous, much loved gift from a friend for Chinese New Year.)

But even though I didn't even use a texture that second time I was actually never the first to post and at the end of the evening we found out those that were the fastest had switched to...gasp...shooting in JPEG and not editting their photos at all!  Granted they still created some impressive work, but we all thought maybe while we were shooting with intent, we didn't really want to lose all creativity and thought.  So one very talented, creative member came up with another way to play.  Photo Poker Relay.

Same concept, but you knew who was to go next and you had 24 hours to post your picture.  Today was my turn.  I was given a compass to incoorporate into my photo.

And the compass and composition in the photo before me was so beautiful (check out my friend's facebook cover page if you want to see).  But when I asked my friends if I could borrow a pretty compass a friend made me LOL by asking "As opposed to an ugly compass?!"

Alas no one had one for me, so I spent the day trying to pair my ugly, doesn't really work, children's compass/binoculars with that which I find beautiful in my life.

But she wasn't very cooperative.

I only got a few shots of her playing with the compass before she started crying about the back pack.

 

Do you see the compass in the lower left?  She was more interested in playing with her travel tripod.  I figure she couldn't go on a trip without her camera.

This one was almost what I envisioned, but oops!  Where is the compass?  Turns out she was sitting on it.  But by then she was done being on the bed.  I think she thought I wanted her to nap...with all that stuff?

So I called in my professional model.

And this was a close third choice, but you can't really tell he is holding a compass...plus I really wanted to hand off "baby" to the first time mom photographer following me not "child."

So we moved downstairs away from that whole bed/nap risk.

Which did bring Sweet Pea a lot of glee as she immediately started playing peek-a-boo with the maps and her big brother, SnapDragon.

And while SnapDragon did a great job of keeping the compass exposed as one would want in product shots, it just didn't quite seem like the natural incorporation I wanted.  

And when we moved to here I knew we were close to done...But I thought okay, take a picture of SnapDragon lying on a map with a compass in his hand...maybe that will work.
But of course when I went to snap another to go for a deeper depth of focus (having both SnapDragon's eye and the compass in focus) Sweet Pea got a fresh wind in her sails.

Which led to this gleeful, but not exactly what I was going for, shot.  Sure you can see just a hint of Sweet Pea's smile and a hint of the compass in SnapDragon's hand but no.

And when they both put their heads down and Sweet Pea started fake snoring (the funniest, cutest thing ever!), I knew it was over.  So I went back to the 5th photo I took, played with it for awhile, and posted it.

I guess I could have let the kids play in peace that last hour.