hugecamera.com

JR and I took on quite a lofty ambition for our Halloween costume. We decided to go as a HUGE CAMERA, and upload the photos as we took them to a site. We talked about it a few weeks ago, even registered the domain name. But we hemmed and hawed, thinking it was too much work, so we didn't. And then yesterday we changed our minds.

So after work on October 30th, we began. And it took all night. We drew rough sketches, figured out measurements, bought pleather, PVC pipe, a saw and a huge pot liner. In short, hugecamera began with pleather and a dream. We lost a lot of brain cells using PVC primer and cement for 4 hours straight... and... where was I? Oh...

Here is the result:



It may not look like much, but wait til you see us in it:

Well, that may not convince you, but, I'm telling you, hugecamera is going to take this town by storm, baby. We were the hit of the party, when we weren't actually hitting people at the party. This thing is HUGE. It's 5 feet wide, 4 feet tall, and 3 feet deep, and that's not counting the lens. For some reason, lots of people thought we were a TV. Here is where I stress that this was hugecamera BETA.

Here's the plan behind hugecamera: with a video camera, a regular camera, and a laptop inside, we'd take pictures of all the great costumes on Halloween. We'd be uploading them to hugecamera's flickr as we went, and hugecamera.com would be updated with the most recent photos in the flickr feed.

Here's what actually went down: we didn't mount the video camera inside the lens, so we couldn't keep it pointing thru the hole. And even then, the video still capture and upload wouldn't work. We had to switch to using the camera, which is me, reaching as far into the lens as possible, no way of aiming and focusing, and snapping a shot thru the hole. In addition, pleather is freaking suffocating!!! It was a nice, sunny, breezy day, but inside the cam, it was a dead still 130 degrees. We were dripping with sweat. And if you think it's easy to maneuver a 5 foot wide and 3 foot deep box (which you are holding up with an elaborate pulley system of ropes over both your shoulders) while taking pictures, through an incredibly crowded Google Halloween party, you are sadly mistaken. We spent a lot of the time shuffling sideways thru tight spots. And we only put viewports on the front. So we were just stepping sideways until we saw someone's feet, or knocked into someone or something, or hit something overhead.

Outside of the technical difficulties and a number of people thinking we were a TV, it was a great costume, and we had so much fun. Most people wanted to see inside. (That makes for my favorite photo of the day:)

The kids loved us, we had a few of them crawl under and hang out with us, and lots of people had their picture taken with us. That was cool. I was told that it was very entertaining to watch us trying to maneuver thru the crowds, much less the doorways. We learned a lot of what to do differently, and we'll be doing this again. Maybe notsohugecameraonwheels...