Monday, December 29, 2008

Ping Pong Portrait

My wife hates clutter. As I am typing this, she is approaching a nervous breakdown while cleaning up after...well, me. I have books, magazines, PEZ dispensers, coffee cups, sunflower seed shells, photo's, computer parts, DVD's, remote controls, business cards, hard drives and all sorts of miscellaneous papers ranging in levels of importance from gas receipts to tax deductions worth potentially thousands of dollars laying around in any number of places. In other words...I'm a slob.

It has been Lea's lifetime goal to minimize the amount of crap we have in the house. It isn't uncommon for me to find a pair of shoes I can't live without (granted, I haven't worn in 5 or 6 years though) buried unceremoniously in a box labeled for Goodwill. Anytime I find these little treasures I unpack them and put them back where they belong. On the floor in the bedroom.

Well, imagine my surprise when on Christmas morning I got a Ping Pong table from Lea. Before I even opened the gift, she said probably 5 or 6 times..."I regret buying you this." I couldn't imagine what it would be but my imagination did wander a bit and a Ping Pong table wasn't the direction it was going I can assure you :)

Anyway, I got this sucker put together and it looks pretty huge in the basement! I love it! I suppose I could have been a good husband and moved the stuff I needed to move for the table into more appropriate places than say...the corner of the room but what the heck, it looks good :)

I wanted to try a self portrait with my new toy so I set up a couple of soft boxes, and ended up using the timer on the camera to trigger the shot. For some reason my remote trigger for pocket wizards wasn't synching right with the camera. Any of you photogs out there reading this that may have come across the same problem in the past and knows what I need to change please feel free to drop me a line would ya?

Anyway, the shot is done, it is posted here. I will post it in Facebook in a moment with this same story and as I look back at the table I wonder if I should remove the tripod, lenses, caps, flashes, laptop, batteries and other goodies I've left on it...Naaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :)


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you know your maternal grandmother was a pingpong champion in the state of Maine when she was younger!!!!!
Have fun....Mom

Randy said...

Great shot Mat! I totally agree with you about the shoes. I don't have a lot of shoes, but there seem to be a couple of pairs that I've had for 10 years.

Btw...the die hards would take offense at your use of the word Ping Pong...it's TABLE TENNIS! :)

Looks like I'll have to come up there and put your skills to the test my friend!

Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

I think the best part of the photo is the juxtaposition between the perfectly round smooth ball, and the smooth round bald head of the guy hitting the ball. Ah a freshly shorn scalp but not too shiny makes for a good picture. They should put it on the cover of sports illustrated! Or at least Pong Illustrated. good one

UncaJ