Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/04/17

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Subject: Re: [Leica] National Geographic
From: John Collier <jbcollier@shaw.ca>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 07:29:04 -0600

The best example I know of was one I read about in American Photographer 
many years ago. There was a brief article on a cosmetics campaign that 
involved a single shot of a hand holding the product. The photographer 
was asked to explain how the shot was done and at one point she casually 
mentioned that she had exposed 1000 rolls of film during the days of 
shooting. The next issue was filled with letters than ran along the same 
lines as Dante's posting. Surprisingly the number of quality 
photographers did not not increase even with the accidently release of 
the big secret: "They are not any better than you, they just shoot more 
film."   :-)

I recently shot a puppet show at my son's play school. It lasted all of 
a hour and a half and I ran through ten rolls in three different bodies. 
By rank amateur standards, the child is vaguely recognizable, they were 
all keepers. :-) Judging by the number of reprint requests, there were 
many "once in a lifetime" shots by parental standards. I would say that 
there were about ten good shots. By that I mean ten could have been 
published. There was only one really good shot and by that I mean one I 
would have put on the wall in my house. Not bad considering how I feel 
about the photographer's work in general.

As a mechanic I often get the customer commenting that the only reason I 
am fixing their car is that they do not have all the tools I have. I 
have been a mechanic for twenty years and I know better but I just smile 
and nod my head.

John Collier

On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, at 10:33 PM, dante@umich.edu wrote:

"a long diatribe on the excessive use of film by professionals"

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