Six Hours in the Woods

I'm about ready to start my recovery. Saturday from 6pm to nearly 10pm I was invited to shoot a live action roleplay game, sponsored by the Wayfinder Experience... a summer camp that my daughters fell in love with last summer, and which my eldest begins staff training for in less than a week.

Here are some selected images from the event, though I feel like I do need to take some extra care with many of these... it's not my usual habit to make this many photos publicly viewable, and I'm hoping it wasn't a mistake to do so.

None of these (with one exception) have been heavily edited. Some heavy processing was done for atmosphere, especially to many of the otherwise useless shots once the light was all but gone and my eyes and technology made focus a hit-or-miss experience. I expect some more laborious cropping and processing on an individual basis might make at least some of these outstanding, rather than glorified snapshots. Click any photo to follow through to the Flickr account where there are many (many) more.



A few more shots appear on the next page too.


I had to shoot as a participant to keep the role-playing live, especially for those at the event for whom this was a first-time experience. And so you will find tags for "ghost photographer" and such, as I played the role of uncommunicative observing spirit from the nether realms. It was an interesting way to shoot, one I wish I could do in more situations, as it might allow me to do more candid portrait work with less of the inevitable "looking at the camera" that tends to spoil about 80% of all shots that contain people.


(I really want to do a photomanipulation of one or two of the "self portraits" I managed to do while players were off in rooms that I didn't want to shoot. Those may come later. One fairly raw image does appear in the long collection of pics that are now up, mainly for comment, feedback and sharing, as many are not what I'd call finished images.