Matt's Year 12 Formal

The last event of the school calendar was the Year 12 formal.

Matt spent the day helping organise the after-formal party.  Their previous plans had fallen through because the venue they had booked couldn't cope with some of the guests being under the 18 year old drinking age.  Karyn said he got home, had a quick shower, got partially dressed, and raced out the door.

He said the formal was "no big deal", and he was going with a group of his mates.

I turned up, camera on hand, to see him arrive.

Here is Matthew with "his mates".

Her name is Melanie.

Catherine's Year 12 Formal

The daughter of a friend of ours was having her Year 12 formal, and I offered to come over and take some photos.

I really had ulterior motives.  You see when I did a photography course a few years ago, we did a module on portraits.  Now to do take a portrait, you need a subject.  In my house, both Karyn and Matthew refuse to have their photos taken normally, so getting them to sit for a portrait shot was impossible. I ended up having to use one of our dogs for my portrait photo.

Catherine is extremely photogenic, so she agreed to pose for some shots before going to her Formal.  I took lots so that I will have plenty of material to practice my Photoshop skills in the coming year.  I learnt a lot from the process, including how difficult it can be to get a good picture during a social occasion with people all around, the problems of taking photos in the very late afternoon, the difficulty of finding a nice background, and how you can't trust some photo printing places to accurately print the right colours.

Anyway, it was nice of her to give me the opportunity to practice.