The below video is the result of a ludicrous amount of time.  Had I the chance to go back in time and change my response to Bill’s question “can you make a promo slide show for camp?” I would have said “no, I need to catch up on flossing” or something equally dumb as an evasive move such that I could run when he blinked.

The source material wasn’t exactly designed for promotional means.  The photos had a “family photo album” quality to them, which is nice for slide shows and adds a homey touch, but not too good for promotions.  Every good picture of the Water Carnival had someone mooning the photographer.

Some photos simply made no sense, such as this gem:

Joe, doing something....

From the cropped picture it may appear that Joe just discover that his boxers were a bad place to store his loaded mousetrap collection, but it can’t be.  In the uncropped version, one can clearly make out Joe’s shorts and the only place that pain that’d induce this phase could come.  More importantly, this is one of two successive photos where Gary’s to Joe’s right (our left) holding a snake and he’s staring into the distance like someone sent a curling stone into another man’s scrotum.

Trying to find a picture of the water carnival was tough for 3 reasons:

1) The photo was underexposed or noisy
2) Dan Rowley or another member of the Aquatics staff looked like he was about to rip off a kid’s head and sharpen his ogre teeth upon their bones.
3) Some kid is mooning the camera.

Normally the last isn’t a problem as I’m rather good at removing undesirables from photographs as proven by my “no pimple left behind” treatment I’ve been called on to perform for people looking to gussy up a photo.  But, somehow the very gestalt of the picture screamed “ass crack!” such that if it weren’t present, the visceral equipment of perception would be aghast to not find a vertical smile as it condensed meaning from a cloud of data.

I don’t want to lash out at the photo takers as they’re all nice people who been given technology with little training like expecting a boa constrictor to operate a x-ray machine or an 18-year old a voting booth.  Every camera has a review function built into the LCD so while reviewing the photos I entered a near paroxysmal rage when I saw a photo that was both underexposed and noisy, followed by 22 other underexposed and noisy shots.

Finally, there was the actual content.  I excluded several COPE pictures of the mountain board operators seemingly ignoring the kids going down the hill (there’s always the photographer).  Although there were several amazingly framed shots of kids succumbing to sudden gusts of gravity from their carbon fibre death traps as the Health Lodge sign came into view.  One COPE picture actually made me smile in joy for literally minutes.

Richard Ebright - Transcription Expert

As I thought an later confirmed, Dr. Richard Ebright is an expert in DNA transcription at Rutgers, and he had the courtesy to sally forth and risk death at our COPE course after years of unfolding the mechanisms that create human life.

Gun pictures were tought to get as it was either a child who would probably be blown back as the bullet stayed stationary or a grizzled, slightly crazy adult, getting his last Charlie.  Every picture of the archery staff involved them wearing some sort of non-hat on their heads even in the Norman Rockwellesque “Son, lemme show you how to shoot” ones.  There were about 20 pictures of people cycling, but each was either a kid, thinking he was about to fall, a kid about to fall, or a kid falling. “Oh Shit!” shouldn’t be the face when one tries to inspire confidence.  I could have used a cannondale promo image, but most were out of place.

Considering we started with 13,000 photos I think we pulled out a solid 60.  Tempus fugit!