This morning, Anthony's preschool had a Christmas service, which included the kids (aged 3-6) putting on a “pageant” depicting the Christmas story. The older kindergarten-aged kids did a lot of speaking roles and other complex things, while the younger kids like Anthony had less challenging tasks.
Anthony was the star. Or, at least, a star, lighting the way for the three kings. He wore a star hat, and made “twinkling movements” with his fingers above his head. If you use your imagination, you can see Anthony on the far right in the picture above. (A crop taken from a short video of his shining moment I made with my point-n-shoot camera from my seat at the back of the room.)
Some of the youngest kids got to be sheep, crawling around on their hands and knees and making sheep sounds. That was the cherry role for the youngest kids, and Anthony wanted to do it as well. But we told him that since he was so tall, they needed him to be a star, and with that he was happy to be a star.
The tallest kid in his class is Monet — third from the right in the picture above — a cute kid that can have the most angelic of faces. I have a shot of her that I've been looking for an excuse to post, so maybe I will tomorrow. Besides their height, she and Anthony have the distinction of being the only native English speakers in their class.
Members of the audience could take videos, as I did a bit, but photography was disallowed. They probably meant to disallow the use of flash, but since so few people know how to actually control their cameras, it's easier to just lay a blanket ban. Sigh.
There were professional photographers who will provide photos for sale (they do this for all the events, such as the sports day in the summer). The main guy had a huge lens mounted on a tripod, a Nikon 300mm f/2. This thing can probably pull in more light than the Hubble telescope, and likely cost as much.
I didn't realize how rare it was at the time, or I might have asked to have my picture taken beside it because it's apparently extremely rare, having cost about $30,000 when new 20 years ago, with only about 300 ever made. Wow. Fumie asked me this evening what I want for Christmas. Hmmm.......
Until the last paragraph I thought you meant the 300mm 2.8 which is “only” ~$4-5000.
Here’s another page about the 300mm/2.0. Woah. That’s really crazy. I wonder if the case came with wheels … Bjørn Rørslett has it on his telephoto lenses list, too.
Nikon’s 70-200mm/2.8 is relatively more affordable and quite a splendid lens, too. I have one that I use on average once a year – while not 7kg it’s still a pain to bring anywhere.
– ask