Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/03/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I am sitting in the churchyard at Flore eating my lunch. The service has been over for some time, a few stragglers are leaving the church after spending some time chatting. The sky is a typical English mix of blue with white clouds in some parts and black as thunder in others. I watch what I take to be worshipper set out on a footpath across a field in front of the church and think to myself that she must be very devout to walk from the next village to attend services. The path although fairly dry today can be very messy. I take a shot, my usual stuff, landscape with lone figure. When I look again the lone figure is on the far side of the field and turns to come back toward the church. She is walking slowly, head occasionally bowed, obviously lost in thought as if reluctant to complete the field crossing. I toy with the idea of another shot but my sandwiches are good and I let the moment pass. I have since found out that her late father used to walk his dog on that footpath. Eventually she returns to the churchyard and stands over a grave for a time then approaches me. She stops a distance from where I am sitting (very English) and asks if she might ask a favour of me (decidedly un-English). She explains that she used to live locally and had been visiting her mother in nearby Daventry and that the grave she had been looking at was that of her father. She was on her way back to Devon, where she now lives after returning from several years in America and had stopped by the church to take a photograph of the grave (she pays someone local to tend it). Finding that the camera she thought was in the car was not there she was considering where she might buy a disposable on a winters Sunday in the UK when she saw me take a shot of her walking across the field. She asks, "Was I a photographer?" and "would I take a photograph for her of her fathers' grave?". "In the loosest possible sense" and "yes I would" I replied. I took a couple of shots, she thanked me profusely and with her emotions running high and my web address in her purse she left at about 1:30pm. I finished my lunch and as insurance against looking an idiot I took a few extra shots of the grave before I left. Devon is quite a drive from Flore but at 7pm I got an email (maybe she has a Lear jet) and she tells me that she has been smiling "about life's little co-incidences". Not only does she "meet a chap with a camera but a real photographer" (she has by this time visited my web site) and "you just never know your luck, do you?". She closes her email with a post script: "I wonder if you know the work of James Ravilious? I think you would appreciate it. I had a small hand in the last published book of his photographs with text by Peter Beacham called 'Down the Deep Lanes' published by Devon Books. I'll give you further details if your interested." I checked him out. He was born 1939, died 1999 and wandered around Devon shooting local stuff with a Leica M3. It's a small world. http://www.geebeephoto.com/temp/Flore/Flore.html Graham http://geebeephoto.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html