I had about half hour to spare so dropped into the house for a coffee on my way to Buntingford, it also gave me a chance to pick up a list of the rest of the jobs and download the images taken so far. The next port of call was to photograph the switching on of the Christmas lights in Buntingford by one of the towns oldest residents, Olive Pritchett who turned out to be a very funny, witty and sharp centerian, which is more than can be said for the council officials. There were about ten very elderly people there in wheelchairs along with other guests and the first councillor stood up and introduced himself as the the chair of this committee, vice chair of that committee, member of such and such committee blah blah blah. He then said that he only had a short speech, about four pages long and everyone laughed at his joke until.......he pulled out four sheets of paper!
Twenty minutes later and I'm starting to keep an eye on my watch as the next job looming as well as losing the will to live.
Then another 'official' got up and made another imtermnable speech before we finally went outside to switch on the lights but, yep, you've guessed, more speeches.
At one pont, one of the wheelchair bound guests said (in a typically loud, hard of hearing type voice) "Has he finished yet? He ain't 'alf bloody going on!". I almost p*ssed myself laughing. Anyway, here are some shots of a lovely lady.
Next job was round the corner for a swimming club presentation night. The rules are that if there are 15 or less people in a shot you must have all there names and in the right order so I was dreading this as once you have taken a shot they tend to mingle and names get muddled up. I walked in to the hall and was very pleased to see more than 100 awards laid out on the main table so a nice group shot would be inorder. I had to wait about ten minutes and was supplied with an ice cold beer which went down very well. A few photos of the group of winners and I was on my way.
Last job of the night was back down to Cheshunt, which was a bit of a pain travelling wise, to photograph the Cheshunt Bowls Society awards presentation. When I got there luckily it was another group shot, around 18 in total (phew!) so got a few in the bag and done.
Obviously that's not the end of it but there were no tight deadlines so I did all the processing and uploading this morning which took just over an hour, once I have my workflow sorted out that should come down.
Verdict? Enjoyable but glamorous it ain't! You certainly learn a lot and you do have to keep on your toes to stay on top of it, the type of jobs I was on are standard fodder for local press and I am sure there will be much more variety in the coming weeks. I've got a Saturday lined up in a couple of weeks so I'll probably be covering some rugby and football matches.