Pumpkins and Dragons

On Friday I grudgingly headed down to the physics building on our campus to photograph the annual Halloween Pumpkin Drop. It becomes challenging to make a successful, new photo every year, hence my hesitation to excite. I arrived at 11:45 as the assignment suggested and was peeved to find out the dropping didn't start for another 45 minutes. With rain spitting down, I went inside to wait it out.

When showtime started, something new happened - kids! There are not typically kids at this event since it's in the middle of a school day and on a college campus, but, here they were, brought in on a bus from their Boston Public School.

They lined the perimeter across from me, making it basically impossible for me to not photograph them. They were very excited about the drop - some of the pumpkins have paint in them, some were frozen, etc. When two went the edge of the roof and plummeted down at once, the kids squealed at an extra-high decibel level, and started chanting "Three at once! Three at once!"

The photo we ran is of the kids' reaction to the largest pumpkin of the bunch slowly being rolled over the edge of the roof and off. I just love the expressions, and I especially love the two kids hugging each other, and then the little boy with his hands on the side of his face.

This was the original crop, but once I got in touch with the school, we found out the little girl in the middle in pink, and the boy on the left, could not be photographed (which is why I blurred them here)

This is a version of what we ran  which I cropped more to my liking for this blog entry (so you can see more of the pumpkins at their feet)...

While I'm no Eisenstadt, I have to admit that this shoot reminded me of my all-time favorite shot of his...

And I was just really grateful to have one of those moments when you just laugh out loud while watching someone else's joy in something simple.