[Leica] RE: Photo Night/ It's a small world

["BIRKEY, DUANE" <dbirkey@hcjb.org.ec>]

>Duane,

>Did I mention knowing someone who used to work for your operation 
doing
>what you do?

>Paul (last name I don't remember) and wife Claudia work for the Orange
>County Register and started the wildly successful PhotoNight, an
>informal gathering of photojournalists.  They had just traveled to
>Ecuador and Chile (Claudia's origin).  While in Quito they had staged 
a
>Photonight and Paul said he had gone to your offices to get some gear. 
 

>Small world.

>Donal Philby
 
I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce Strong and Paul Rodriguez while 
they were here as quests of the US Embassy to put on a couple of 
seminars for the Photojournalism community of Ecuador.   Bruce spent 2 
months at HCJB  in 87 and if I remember right used his photos from his 
time here  to get an internship at NGS.   Both are quite talented as 
far as the slides I saw.   We didn't talk about EQ but  Bruce had Leica 
M  and Nikon AF around his neck and Paul had EOS.  I was rather swamped 
with a couple of deadlines and running around like crazy, so we didn't 
chat much when they came to my office.  Besides that my office was a 
complete mess and I had cameras and lenses all over the cabinets and 
strong around the floor and pages of slides everywhere. Kind of what it 
looks like now.............................  Anyhow.........

They came back the next day though, as Bruce will now tell you, don't 
ever go to another country to give a multimedia presentation without 
making sure you have all of the right things with you.  He brought a 
goofy 1/4" reel to reel sync tape that was recorded using all four 
tracks.  We have something like 40 Revox reel to reel machines at HCJB 
but not a single one that could pull off both the sound and sync track 
off his tape.  Fortunately, we discovered that our sister TV station 
across the street  has a multitrack unit and they were able to transfer 
it over to DAT.   Unfortunately in the rush to get it recorded or 
possibly a matter of the track bleeding over a bit from using different 
machines, they ended up with the time code coming through the audio.  
Fortunately it was a tone that didn't sound too bad with the music and 
had about the right rhythm.   

Of course about at that point they began to realize that they needed 
three projectors and a projection stand for the presentation that 
evening.   Fortunately, I have one such animal and it barely fit in 
Pablo's Nissan Patrol.   Their host photographer  (extremely talented 
Pablo Corral Vega)  and myself set up the whole arrangement for the 
evening program while Paul and Bruce gave a seminar at another 
location.  To make matters even funner, they had a variety of slide 
mounts and a few duplicates that were copied and mounted backwards.  So 
Pablo ran sound and I got to focus three projectors on the fly during 
the presentation and that was not a whole lot of 
fun............................

But,  I was glad to be able to help them out and in the end, everyone 
had a great evening and the presentation ended up coming off pretty 
professional.   

Duane Birkey
HCJB World Radio
Quito Ecuador