Following up Ellis' great thread about the worst advice ever, how about this: w hat's the funniest comment anyone's ever made to you while you were shooting?
I gave my all time favorite in the other thread, but here's a close second: I'm shooting on a cold rainy night in downtown Seattle a couple of years ago, and t his guy walks by and stops and looks for a minute and says "just a wild guess: y ou don't have a girlfriend, right?"
ha!! i had to admit at the time that i didn't...
~cj
OK, boys and girls. I can't wait to see/hear what this will bring. Very enjoyable thread from Ellis. Chris' new inquiry is the perfect follow-up.
Chris, may I assume that wedding photographers horror stories are out? Most of mine were awful at the time but funny in retrospect.
____________
OK, here's mine.
As a wedding photog I always got the qip, "Got film in there?" My answer, "Usually."
S.
that should be "quip"
not qip
I was shooting pictures of Seattle's Kingdome before they blew it up and while I was waiting for a cloud to pass an extremely intoxicated homeless man staggered up and wanted to look at the groundglass on my Speed Graphic. He bent over, peered through it, then, shocked, stood up again and squinted at me and asked in a kind of pleading tone, "Is that upside down or something?" And then he fell over, dizzy. It was too much for him.
I had the ultralight aluminum 8x10" Gowland monorail pointed toward a regatta of tall ships headed up the Hudson (alas, they changed their route due to low water conditions, so no good shots to be had in the end). A guy comes up to me and says, "I bet that's the kind of camera they would have used in the days of those ships" (many of which predated the invention of photography, lightweight aluminum monorails aside).
Then there was the drunk who tapped me on the shoulder in Tampere and went into a long tirade in Finnish, occasionally making the motion of shooting a rifle with accompanying sound effects. In retrospect, I suppose it was funny.
Steve, if you have some wedding-related killers, i say tee 'em up.
~cj
I've got two. I was under my cloth (black on the inside, white out) focusing on a blown-out van amongst rubble in an awful, abandoned section of Jersey City, NJ. I was made aware somehow of a presence behind me. I dropped the cloth and spun around to see an African-American man standing 10 feet behind me. I nodded to him, and then he smiled and said, "This ain't no neighborhood to be hanging out under no white sheet." We both laughed at that.
Just after "Bridges of Madison County," came out as a movie I was shooting a truss bridge in Rockingham County, VA. I heard someone walking up to me on the gravel road. I turned and saw an old farmer-type watching me. I nodded hello, and he asked what I was doing. I told him that I was being paid to photograph old truss bridges throughout VA. He was silent for a beat and then he responded, "We don't need your kind around here," and walked away. I can only assume...
Is it an indulgence to relate two episodes? I shall, anyway.
1. I was set up for a record cover pic of a somewhat 'celeb' rock singer beside an unusual structure in North Sydney. As the moment of capture drew ever nearer so did a middle-aged, mildly intoxicated street-dweller in an overcoat. He strode right up, peroused the Linhof Technika and queried the accessory spirit-level inserted into the shoe on top of the body. "What's that for?" he asked. "To make sure everything is level," was my reply to which he opened his overcoat and took out a builder's level and starting checking the nearby bus seat, power pole, garbage bin. "I'm always amazed how many things aren't level," he said as he sauntered off.
2. I was shooting a shopping complex in Darwin, a remote far-flung outpost of civilisation. I was annoyed at having missed a wonderful opportunity for a personal shot of a queue of barefooted Aboriginals lined up at an island stall for a shoe repair company when I had another encounter. As I flicked my darkcloth out to ready it for it's enshrouding task and very tall (6ft 3in) young man came over and in a brusque menacing manner enquired: "I suppose you think you're a magician?" to which I instantaneously responded, "You think I'm going to pull a rabbit out of a hat; I'm actually going to pull a hair (hare) out of my ass!" He shambled off. Next thing I was being abused by this aggressive, loud woman (musn't upset the patrons, must I?) She accused me of being rude to her 11 year old son. Mind you, he was beside her and her language was like Velvia compared to my subtle EPN remark.
That's it from me for now, cheers Chris - great topic.
Walter Glover
I was deep in the most rural areas of Haiti, and shot a photo of a striking elderly lady in front of her mud and thatch home and had given her a Polaroid as a thank you. She looked up with piercing brown eyes and quietly said: (in creole)
"Your machine speaks the truth too quickly!"
From another photographer on this forum who insisted that while the image on thegroundglass was reversed top to bottom it wasn't reversed left to right.
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