Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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? >