Calendar Project: Cake Lady

I took the task of creating the photos for the calendar under short notice, having only the month of October to work with. The theme of this years calendar is “Community and Volunteers.” I ended up with 32 candidate photos which were reviewed by a committee this week selecting 13 for full page use (cover + 12 months). There’s also five or six smaller photos will be printed on the back cover. They go to the printers later this month with an availability date for the finished calendar planned for the first week of December.

There was a change this year. Previous calendars have only been in black and white, but my photo presentation using my iPad persuaded the committee to go with full color this year, even with the additional cost color printing brings.

Of course the committee was unaware of the real work in this project — those 32 candidate photos came from 1,200+ total shots which they never saw. For me it’s been an interesting experience suddenly finding myself photographing people with both a deadline and theme to work with — a big step from my casual personal landscape photography.

While I’ve felt awkward and uncertain at times it’s also been very rewarding. I thought I’d preview a few of the selected photos here.

I call this first photo “Cake Lady.” It was taken at an outdoor fund raising event in early October on a beautiful fall day. There was an open sided tent for shade with tables covered by dozens of delicious looking homemade cakes. Behind these cakes sat this beautiful lady. Younger women were also present perhaps even a daughter or granddaughter. I simply told her I’d love to take a photo of her and would that be okay? She gave a nod and a weak yes but then promptly straightened her jacket and sat a little straighter in her chair. What a great face and I suspect there’s more then one interesting story hiding behind those sunglasses.

I wish I’d went back later and gotten one of those cakes. They looked to be the real deal!