Nursery 2011

I'm a nursery teacher at church. That means for the 2 hours after our main church meeting I hang with the 18 month-to-3 year olds. We start by welcoming each child with a hello activity, we have singing time, and I give a two minute lesson. Then we get on the floor and play with toys, read books, clean up, eat Goldfish, roll out some Play-Doh, and send them home. I've got the most fun job at church ... though I seem to say that each time I get a new calling.

In December our 3-year-olds turning 4 were getting ready to graduate to their new class. Our Nursery leader asked me if we could do a portrait with all the kids. I must have been temporarily insane to say yes. It's difficult to get 16 adults to all look the same direction for a group shot. Imagine trying it with a bunch of preschoolers.

This photo hangs on the bulletin board at church. My friend James asked if I took it. He suggested it was statistically impossible to get this many children to look in the same direction at the same time for 1/100 second — there must be trickery involved.

James absolutely got it right — this one was faked. As people get better at covering their tracks in Photoshop, you have to use common sense to spot a fake.

I used a tripod to take a few dozen of the same pose. Picking the best shot where I had most of the kids looking my way, I used Photoshop to paint in different takes of kids from 5 other photos.

• The entire right side of the photo, including clump of three girls on the far right, along with their background and most of their reflection on the floor came from a completely different photo. I didn't get the floor reflection completely right, see if you can spot it.
• The boy in front of them (far right) would not hold still for anything, and he was completely dropped in over the top of the girls.