One year camera anniversary: Day two

This was a special Saturday.  I had brought my camera out early that morning when the kids went into the maize fields to clear out the weeds.  Afterward they set up their new soccer goals and picked teams to kick around the Jabulani balls donated and sent by a particularly generous sponsor from the States.  These were all intended for the monthly newsletter, but I enjoyed it all so much that I hung around a bit longer for a few personal shots.  That's when I saw the boys riding down the hill behind the laundry washing pad on sheets of cardboard.  It was something different that I had never seen them do before.  I wanted to catch it before they moved onto something else.  It wasn't entirely necessary as they didn't get immediately bored.  By the time I left Nakuru, they had worked a dirt trench into the hill from going down so often.

I tried experimenting with something new in these pictures.  I tried using a slower shutter speed and catching some of the movement.  I was at least partially inspired by the top picture in the series on this post to Confessions of a Travel Junkie.  It was exciting and had some real energy to it.  I wanted to try it myself.  I tried first by shooting from the side.

I think the idea was to catch a few of them in motion at the same time, but that never worked out.  The composition wasn't so great either in that they were all too small.  You could see the motion, but there wasn't an awful lot of it to see.  So I moved in closer and in front of them to fill the frame.  From then on it was a waiting game.  Their play has drama and action and excitement.  It's just a matter of taking enough shots that one of them is interesting.  As long as enough are taken, one will turn out.  There were a lot like these before the kids managed to arrange themselves right.

Of course, even before these pictures can be possible, the boys have to get over the fact that a camera is present.  This has been well documented on this blog before, but please enjoy more pictures of the boys posing and tackling the others to try and get my attention.