| Author | Message | ||
     Edward8 Tinkerer Username: Edward8 Post Number: 8 Registered: 03-2010 Rating: N/A |
Mndean: That's a terrible tale! However, I suspect, all too common. We were taught to respect a roll of film and to treat it with care. Know the rules - then break 'em. If necessary. But I fear that digi photographers lack a vital ingredient - a sense of history. The historical record will be sadly lacking 20, 50 or 100 years hence. However, we must plug along ... I try to shoot at least a couple of rolls of B+W or trannies per project, just for the record. Archival processing is, now, difficult to obtain and highly expensive. But old habits die hard - I still shoot CF cards in "rolls", 36 exposures to a card, no matter what the capacity. The cards are then safely stored. I regard them as my negs. Barnum/Marty: Just a note to clear the air. I was referring to the precision of rifle shooting, the techniques used and the relationship to shooting with a camera. Not all that different, really. Less blood, though. Maybe we should drop the gun stuff, eh? But, yes, SLR - in its other meaning - does denote Self-Loading Rifle. A tale ... but true. My first camera was a Box Brownie. My first "rifle" was a Diana slug gun, scrounged from the snotty-nosed kid down the road. My first image was of an Aboriginal kid, wild-eyed and bewildered, standing on the track to our house. That's what I remember. I produced a contact print and showed it to my mates. As I recall, the general comment was something like: "Why take a photograph of HIM ..." My response should have been: "Why not ..." But the Diana didn't work. Our back yard was infested with magpies, a large ill-mannered bird that darts upon and pecks schoolkids on bikes ... This was close-range stuff. Box Brownie to one side, trusty Diana amidships ... alas. Diana squeaked, made some plopping sounds and expired. Much mocking from bloody magpies. My next camera was a 35mm rangefinder, compliments of the oldish lady wot run the camera shop and stuff in our country town. She wore really red lipstick, which smudged, as I recall. My next rifle was a Martini Henry. The provenance of this unit is unclear. Suffice to say, it came complete with one hand-rolled, cigar-like cartridge - God knows what explosive - and a chunk of lead the size of a bus. To my young eyes, this was akin to a Saturn rocket. It was safely stored - under my bed. Along with the Box Brownie, the home-made, two-valve, short-wave radio that could, on a good night and depending on battery power, pick up Quito, Equador, South America. I told some of my mates about this, but they were not impressed. Never did understand why. Maybe some young people are born to be boring. It was time to fly to coop. Never to return. Years later, I discovered that my half brother - a despicable ingrate but a good bloke - sold my Martini Henry to the snotty-nosed kid down the road, now a well-heeled property developer. The whereabouts of the explosive is unclear. |