For the past three years I’ve done a promotional video for Ockanickon, initially to fill a gap when an offer to film one by some third party fell through and I volunteered to do one on condition that someone else provide the raw material.  This year I received 3800 pictures from the photography crew at camp, more than I received in any other year  and coupled with my new SSD I was looking to make short work of the promo.  I quickly encountered difficulties:

• 1200 shots were simply out of focus.
• 800 were improperly illuminated.  My favorite being those of night activities where the flash caught only a single white object like a shoe or volleyball in the dead stillness of night.
• 700 depict a single child staring at something, completely bored, or with an indeterminate activity involving a book or pencil.
• 600 involved volleyball, the volleyball tournament, or sitting around Totem lodge.
• Golf, horseback riding, rafting, law, dining hall program, the health lodge, mountain biking, CPR and all other leader training had no pictures taken of them at all.
• Ecology only had pictures of people washing their hands.
• Eagle only had pictures of kids staring into the distance or doing a dog pile.
• Handicraft had 4 pictures, but they were quite nice.

I faked a picture of mountain biking by doing a ridiculous crop + rotation on a guy passing by Neshaminy camp site.  Also, I found a wonderful picture of adults engaged in a whipped cream eating contest where if you rotate it and crop out the kids it looks like a group of village elders climbing a glacier with their beards.

I reduced the pool to about 140 usable images that met my requirements and made a video.

Next year I’m either going to provide a shot list or stage everything after the fact at my house.