Princeton Charter School — © Brian Rose

Princeton Charter School — © Brian Rose

I finally got the files from last week’s photo shoot out the door–14 digital images of Princeton Charter School. This being Princeton, the school is pretty posh compared to my son’s public school building in the West Village of Manhattan. The new building contained a gym, black box theater, and art and music classrooms.

I did a number of shots at dusk and just after, but it almost didn’t happen. As magic hour approached, we were shooting in one of the classrooms when all the power in the building suddenly went down. The fire panels whined and error messages flashed, and my assistant and I tried pressing various buttons, but were flummoxed. I got the client on the phone who came rushing over–he lived nearby–and he somehow figured out the system and got the power up just in time for us to catch the fading daylight. (See photo above.) No matter how much you prepare for a shoot, there are always a million things that can go wrong.