RE: [Leica] funerals ! :-(

["Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com>]

Heck, Ted.  I'm surprised you didn't take the big guy out with your third
degree burn in hibachi, or at least your rapidwinder handle ;-)


- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Ted Grant
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2001 9:05 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] funerals ! :-(


Hi B.D.
I had an assignment at the paper to take pictures of a particularly well
known "bad guy" kind of family and as would have it I wasn't told it was
supposed to be a very private affair.  some kind of arrangement with the
paper and the family.

Nice editors do this "We should try and get a picture of ..... Send a
photographer, just assign him and not tell him it's private and lets see
what happens!

I could see I was the only shooter in sight so I figured this is a biggy
family and maybe I'm not supposed to be here. I went back to the car put
together a 560mm 6.8 and was away back from the event figuring I was out of
sight!

I was looking through the camera when there was a tap on my shoulder and as
I turned around a really big guy, like a really really big guy,  had me by
the throat and suggested, with a smile on his face, that if I didn't give
him the film (heck I hadn't even had a shot yet) and leave immediately he'd
put me face down in the grave before the coffin was lowered and nobody would
ever know where I went !

So I thought that was good of him, opened the camera, took the film out
pulling it right out of the cassette and handed it to him. He smiled and let
go and I  very quickly and quietly went to the car!

When I got back to the paper and related my story to the city editor all he
said was, "Oh, so you didn't get any pictures?"  And that was the end of the
story.

I would say under what we might call normal circumstances, this editor would
have been onto the police phone very quickly due to my "being threatened and
in effect, "assaulted."  However, in this case as I found out later, the
papers had given their word the funeral would not become a media event and
the editor who sent me was completely aware of that when he sent me.

But you've heard the old saying , "What goes around , comes around." And the
editor was eventually fired for sending a photographer into another bad
situation.

ted
Ted Grant Photography Limited
www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2001 8:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Leica] funerals ! :-(


> Ted - Dare we ask what happened lo those many years ago?
>