Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/03/20

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Subject: [Leica] WAS: enough with Olympus NOW HCB
From: tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)
Date: Mon Mar 20 16:42:08 2006
References: <C0447485.E277%bdcolen@comcast.net>

B. D. Colen offered:

> And for all the talk of the decisive moment, he shot like a machine gun, 
> and
> really worked his scenes. Eugene Richards tells the story of first being
> voted into Magnum, and immediately heading for the filing cabinets that 
> held
> HCB contact sheets. He said he was amazed at what a prolific shooter HCB > 
> was- shot after shot after shot after shot of the same subject, worked 
> from
> every conceivable angle.<<<<<<<<<<,

Hi B.D.,
As you know it's called milk it, work it, shoot every and anything you can 
find an angle on it while you're doing it, simply because you can't do it on 
the light table or contact sheet later!

So many people think HCB was such an incredible "deceive moment one frame 
only" shooter and that was it! It's crock, he worked every situation for 
everything he could milk from it simply because that's what being a 
photojournalist is all about! Regardless of what some people may think!

As Eugene Richards says... "he was amazed at what a prolific shooter >HCB 
was- shot after shot after shot after shot of the same subject, worked >from 
every conceivable angle.<<<

That's no different than a writer who begins to write a book, they don't 
think they're going to use X-number of words or pages, they start to write 
and eventually they have written a book! Artist's are the same, they don't 
think about how many brushes they'll use nor tubes of paint, they just do 
it.

That's why shooting any documentary or situation, one doesn't think about 
how many rolls or frames, you keep on shooting until you've taken every bit 
of imagery out of the scene/situation you are motivated by.

Even shooting hundreds of rolls in a week or two on some assignments it 
rarely was considered a complete and perfect shoot! Because when you looked 
at the contact sheets you always saw something you missed or could have shot 
from a different angle.

HCB wasn't any different!

ted




Replies: Reply from bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] WAS: enough with Olympus NOW HCB)
In reply to: Message from bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] enough with Olympus DSLR postings PLEASE)