“Mommy take my picture with Sue.”
It was a request made by my then 2-year-old daughter while we were visiting Sue the T. Rex at Chicago’s Field Museum a while back.
She knows I am an avid photographer so asking for a picture with the colossal fossil was seemingly a no-brainer. Of course, getting the massive meat-eating monster in the same frame as my tiny tot proved to be a challenge larger than the bony creature itself.
Sue measures forty-one feet long from nose to tail, and twelve feet tall at the hips. Try getting that in a shot without hiring a lift operator to hoist you into the air and practically out of the building. To this day getting the entire dinosaur and my daughter in the same picture ranks up there as one of the most challenging photo tasks I have ever encountered.
I will be the first to admit that I don’t have the solutions to all of the photo framing dilemmas I encounter. Luckily I have patient family members who will tolerate standing at unique angles as I contort my own body to achieve what I can only hope is the perfect position. In the case of Sue I ended up sprawling out on the floor of the museum and shooting up, though despite my Plastic Man contortions the results were not exactly frameworthy. Instead, my daughter had to settle for a fairly decent pic of her near a six-foot-tall portion of Sue’s leg bone.
That incident was far from the first photo challenge I’ve experienced. One of my most memorable photo tasks was trying to capture my trumpet playing cousin during his Christmas parade performance. I figured it would be a breeze job, only on parade day his band marched the entire route without stopping and he happened to be situated smack in the middle of the trumpet row with four other band members on each side.
I wish I could say that I had solid tips for taking great photos in unusual situations, but the only solid advice I can offer is to take a ton of shots at different angles and try, try again until you are able to capture a shot worth printing.
What are some of your most memorable photo challenges?
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