Chris Lin Photography

As part of National Engineers Week, the Student Engineering Council at the University of Texas at Austin hosts its own E-Week competitions.

It’s a week of craziness. There were two major service/outreach days: Engineering Day at the Museum and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. Each of the student societies competed in and hosted competitions, including capture the flag, Rock Band, talent show, lip-syncing contest, and a canned food drive/building contest.

Throughout the whole week, student societies also scrambled to complete scavenger hunt items like “Make an origami zoo (at least 20 different animals)” and “Make UT clocktower out of legos.”

The student chapter of ASME at UT competed, and won its sixth consecutive year. See the official writeup, Engineers Week — 18th — 25th February, 2011.

Most creative picture with the “Clock Knot” involving only a society’s members. Originally I wanted to do a flash composite, but this was deemed to be too time- and labor-intensive. So instead, we used the geography to our advantage. Inspired by “I Should’Ve Had a V8” by Ryan Brenizer.

All of one’s society officers with Alec (bonus for another organization’s officers picture)

It was less than three months after I got my first SLR that I went to a friend’s wedding. Shooting professionally was far from my mind.

Sometimes it’s strange that these are still some of my favorites. Three years later, it is funny how little equipment I had and how I would have exposed differently. ISO 200 indoors, even with lots of windows? Was I afraid of noise or what? I used my 50mm prime lens the whole day and carried just camera and lens. At this point, I didn’t even own an external flash.

Do a search for “wedding shot list” and plenty of results come up. Some high-profile, like this one from the Knot. They say, “The best way to ensure your photographer captures the right moments for all posterity is to provide a suggested shot list.” About.com has their List of ‘must take’ shots.

Some of them are curiously specific:

• Close-up of groom’s adorably nervous mug waiting for his other half
• Bride with her happy, proud parents and/or stepparents
• Groom with his happy, proud parents and/or stepparents
• Bride/groom with college alums

Others rather obvious:

• Exchanging the rings
• Close up of hands
• The Kiss

It’s like a scavenger hunt! I propose the following items:

• Overzealous guests with cameras, attempting and failing to hide in the foliage.
• Guest annoyed that other guest is blocking his/her line of sight.
• Bride jumping out a window
• Keg stand
• Members of the bridal party propositioning each other
• Bored guest checking facebook/twitter on iPhone 3G
• DJ doing something embarrassing
• Guests clinging to the wall to avoid the dance floor just like in sixth grade
• Guest leaving who’s totally going to get arrested for drunk driving
• Best man flirting with bride
• Maid of honor flirting with groom
• Women fighting over bouquet
• Bloody nose after bouquet toss fight
• Group shot of all ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends
• Kid trying to drink ‘adult beverage’
• Kid with “it wasn’t me” look on his/her face, while another kid cries
• The rings… somewhere on the floor after dropping them while setting up a cool ring shot
• “We’re so not getting back the damages deposit.”

So yeah. Shot lists are silly.

It’s crawfish season, at least back home in Louisiana.

This is a photo I took in 2007 at a crawfish boil my friend Bruce had at his house in New Orleans. Like the mannequin photo, it’s in my desktop wallpaper rotation.

A long time ago I rented another lens, the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM from rentglass.com. Here is one photo from walking around with it at Perkins Rowe, near my apartment at the time in Baton Rouge.

This is through the windows of the then-unopened Levi’s store. The mannequins are not yet set up and dressed.

It’s on rotation as one of my desktop backgrounds. After fellow photographer Christine Tremoulet saw my laptop desktop background and asked if I had taken the photo (it was a Mac one included with the OS) I decided to actually use photos of mine instead.