Our New Eagle Mountain Slate Quarry Photographer
We’ve just “hired” a brand new “quarry photographer” at Blue Slate, Inc.! He’s a bit inexperienced, kind of short in height and he tends to have a short attention span… sometimes… as well. But he’s awfully cute and he works for “bonus time” for playing WII games! And, well, that fits our photography budget just fine…
So, how did this “new hire” come about? Actually, it happened because of three prior events.
The First Event
First, last Christmas a camera was listed on our son’s “wish list” so we bought him one… from Santa, of course. After playing around and taking a thousand photos of everything under the sun, Eli soon forgot about his camera, though, in favor of playing with other toys and games.
After that, his camera was pretty much forgotten and ended up taking up space in the bottom of a drawer for several months… until the other day.
The Second Event
What happened the other day? Someone asked me if we had photos of our slate rock on our Blue Slate Rocks website. Basically he wanted to get an idea of what our Eagle Mtn Slate flagstone looks like – color, size, thickness, etc.
Of course we do have photos on the website… but shortly after I hung up the phone my first thought was “I really need to take (and post) some more “recent” photos of the slate. And I also need new photos to create a page for each of the landscape rock product categories that we produce” for the website.
The Third Event
Several weeks ago now, another customer named Joe visited our column quarry. He had a very expensive camera with him that he handed over to our son, Eli, who is eight…
I about died on the spot! As “nervous sweat” beaded on my temples, I wondered immediately what a camera (with a zoom lens a mile long that would zoom a fly a mile away in so close that you could see the fine hair on his little legs… like this one obviously would) would cost to replace…
Well, over my protests, Joe and Eli won out and Joe assured me that everything was fine. He wasn’t a bit worried about Eli dropping his camera.
I, on the other hand, fought back the heartburn attack I suddenly had, pleasantly but sternly instructed Eli to be super careful with the camera… and then crossed my fingers and prayed for all I was worth!
While Eli was busy playing photographer, though, Joe told me a story. He said that he had often handed his camera over to his grandkids and other children and let them “shoot away”, as he called the jr. photography sessions.
He said the first time he did it he was just hoping to keep one of his grandkids entertained for the time being until his daughter returned home to “take over”.
However, afterwards… when he looked through the dozens of photos that the child had taken… he discovered a few “gems” among the hundreds of snap shots.
He continued on to explain that, in his mind, it was well worth chancing a child dropping the obviously expensive camera to have the reward of the special “shots” he often discovers after they’ve finished playing photographer.
So, for about an hour we talked about photography, rock, the economy, religion, politics… you name it we talked about it… while Eli took one photo after another and had a ball.
Well, Joe’s reassurance… and the distraction of conversation… helped a bit to calm my nerves. But I still felt a tsunami of relief flood over me from head to toe the instant Eli finally handed Joe’s expensive camera back to him… all safe and sound! Yay!
Our Quarry Photography Session
So, fast forward to a few days ago again… The other day when I thought about taking new photos of the rock, I thought of Joe and decided to hand over Eli’s whooping $100.00 Christmas present camera and let him “do his photography thing” once again.
After all, I was curious now (after the discussion with Joe) and wanted to see what Eli would come up with.
So we jumped on the four-wheeler and went down to the quarry where we took photos together (and had a whole lot of fun!) while his dad was busy loading flagstone and patio rock onto a semi-truck to be shipped to Smith Rock over on the West Coast.
The End Result?
Among the pictures of the weeds along the road, trees on the hillside, bugs, the sky and the old trucks parked where we were standing, I found a few “gems” taken of the rock that I can’t wait to use on the website when I have a chance to update it!
Joe was right…
