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New Year’s Challenges.
I know a gentleman photographer who once worked for Life magazine. This was in the days when the old Leica 35mm cameras were the photojournalists tool of trade. The dim dark past, but not necessarily so dim or so dark. Certainly it was all taken in Black and White, though. Well this gentleman said to me that for every photo of his that “Life” published, he would take between two and three thousand images. Wow, how come? Possibly some of it was simply using a motor drive, possibly with a wide angle lens, held above his head to get it over every other press photographers’ heads, and simply pressing the shutter button and keeping it down. They used large backs on the Leicas that held a roll of 35mm film capable of recording 250 images straight off, using a power drive. That would also be with a wide angle lens, manual focus and manual exposures. Much of it, however, would simply be by keeping taking shot after shot after shot knowing that somewhere along the line one of the images would be just what the editors were looking for. Last year, on our big O.E. while we were in China, our daughter and her husband took us to a traditional Chinese family house warming, two hours outside of Chengdu in the primitive country. Rough dirt roads, deep water filled pot holes – you name it, it was encountered. This was a new house built with government compensation for a house supposedly destroyed in the earthquake of last year. They had built a new family country place not too far away and alongside a brand new highway which was under construction. We were to be privileged guests at the shindig. Now the house warming was actually an excuse for a major party with heaps of food and lots of drink. But before the assembled guests were allowed to enter and sit down to feast, the “evil spirits” had to be scared away. This was done, by letting off fireworks, heaps of them. “Double happy bangers”. You know, we used to be able to buy a small packet of them and kids took great delight in setting them off in your letterbox or some such. This, though, was to be on a much grander scale. Seven or eight great rolls of these crackers. Each roll was about fifty centimetres across and were laid out across the front of the house and were to be lit at the appropriate moment. Now, as I had lost my good camera, I was using Janet’s new Olympus E 520. I knew it had a sequential mode in it so played around and found it. I decided to set it going when the first crackers were lit and keep my finger on the button till the camera stopped to down load or the crackers finished, whichever came first. Well, it started and I pushed the shutter button down. Click, click, click, it went on and on till at last the fireworks stopped and I took my finger off the button in time to see the very last image write down to my memory card. To say I was astounded that the camera could take, and write down, about three or four images per second, is the understatement of the year. I found it hard to believe that I had, I think, about one hundred and seventy images on the disc. Of course I deleted some, most of them, but I still have about thirty-five that might be useful in telling a story at some point in the future. Most of the ones I deleted did not add to the story. They didn’t show a flash of fire, or the smoke was too intense. Whatever reason, I still had heaps of images of that spectacle. So perhaps those old and probably not so old photojournalists were not so silly after all. Life probably paid for my friend’s film and processing. You have it all in your hands with your digital camera and computer, so there is no excuse for not capturing the decisive moment, is there. Oh, I wasn’t going to make this a “New Year’s Resolution” challenge, but perhaps on reflection I should - So:
Happy picture taking |