[Leica] New 35mm cropped

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

Mark Rabiner offered:
>>Yes and the art directors had gotten it in their little brains that a
certain job is a Hasselblad job or a Sinar job; or more like medium or large
format job and not so much any brand name.
And if you say "I'm a great photographer you've said you like my work I'm
shooting 35" they're going to thank you very much and go with somebody who
has the camera with the format they want. <<<<<<<

Hi Mark & Crew,

Right along this line of size matters when I did promotion shoots in the 
days when there were lots of "art directors" of a mind set as you speak. 
They had some kind of locked in belief that "only 4X5 or absolutely no 
smaller than 2 1/4" film size or you didn't shoot for them... EVER!

This particular director was one of those over the hill snotty SOB's who 
figured the world was his domain and everyone bowed to him. Damn those kind 
of people are always such big pain in the ass and rarely do I bother with 
them. So bloody pompous about "his way or no way!"

Any how I was about to shoot a minor assignment, "it wasn't like I was about 
to photograph the Queen and the President of the USA together" and 4X5 was 
absolutely necessary!"

Me? "I'm going yeah, yeah Ok sure thing no problem!" What he didn't know was 
I didn't own a 4X5, better still as I do today with much of the techie 
number stuff I figured it was nothing more that a great deal of crap. Well 
OK in reality it depends what the end product is going to be.

So away I went, shot the complete assignment on 35mm Kodachrome with my 
Leica's !  Had some 11X14 size and one particular shot that really really 
worked beautifully into a 16x20 print. What the hell I wanted to show this 
numb nut that he was wrong about size. :-) What the hell they'd only given 
me a single assignment and what was worse, they'd not likely give me another 
in any event. ;-) Besides they really weren't my kind of happy face people I 
like to work with! ;-)

I put the prints out on the work table, he came in and was just blown 
away.... still thinking this was either 4X5 or 2 1/4!

After he was finished near peeing his pants with the gaga's about how good 
they were ... I told him I'd shot them all on 35mm Kodachrome!

You could hear a pin drop as he was speechless, I think for the first time 
in his life! :-) In any even he was a tad miffed because I hadn't shot on 
large film, but really he couldn't say much because he'd already made all 
the accolades about how fantastic the photography quality was and I could be 
sure they'd be calling me again. :-)

They didn't! ;-) I just figured their loss!

As usual he was just all talk with the wrong concept of how quality  was 
attained because "bigger was better." Instead of, it doesn't matter under 
many cases if the photographer knows his gear and film, that's who creates 
the quality image!

cheers,
ted
















 prints made