Re: [Leica] Jazz Shoot Terminus

["Hans Pahlen" <hans@komvux.skola.mark.se>]

I can understand your feelings, Marc. I guess we all have similar
experiences when other people judge what pictures are good and 'dull'.
Let me tell you about an experience I had when I was a freelancer. My wife
(freelance journalist back then) and I had a story about pollution (in
short, employees got slowly blinded after working with some nasty chemichals
at a very well known company). I had worked a lot to get those pictures,
getting permit to make photographs inside the company pretending to
photograph other things . After a few days, I had a series of pictures that
were very good (in my opinion).
OK, we contacted a large evening paper, and they bought the full story and
all my pictures. Then they said, as part of the deal, I would follow one of
their reporters and do some shots at home of one of the families involved.
Very well, it was late in the evening, so I brought my flash and M:s. The
reporter insisted on placing the mother in a sofa, with two little
children beside her, holding a children's book. The picture idea was "Soon
mama will not be able to read for her children any longer". I pulled out my
flash, and discovered that it was not working. DAMN!
In the bad light, I had to expose a Tri-X for ASA3200. The results were hard
to print, grayish, large-grain awful pictures, that I developed in a tank
with D-76 (all they had...) at the newspaper, and then printed in a hurry,
as the presses were waiting. It was not a great feeling, handing over those
'pictures', and I urged them to use the earlier ones.

But guess what, instead of using the good pictures they had bought earlier,
they ran this awful picture on the front page as well as the news stands all
over the country. I felt very bad that day, also on behalf of the mother
involved.
/Hans