This was one of life's little challenges that I normally blow, but that actually turned out OK.
Here's the situation: There's a whole crowd of people in Bill Moran's shop and Bill's going to give a little presentation on knife design (which was really interesting, btw). But he can't get started because so many folks want to speak to him, realizing that this is probably the last time they'll ever see him. (He's elected to forego any further cancer treatment which means the end is near.)
An old friend and former chairman of the ABS board of directors, mastersmith Joe Cordova, approaches Bill Moran with a gift - a knife and sheath he's made especially for Bill. He gives a little speech and gives the knife to Bill. It's all pretty emotional.
After Bill was done with his demonstration about knife design and folks were starting to leave, Joe comes over to me ('cause I'm the guy with the camera) and says, "I just realized I never got a picture of this. Could you take one for me real quick?" Now you gotta understand where we were. Bill's shop is like a dark cave with all manner of stuff and clutter everywhere. There's a couple of flourescent light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, dust and dirt everywhere, etc.
I said, "I'll try but I can't promise you anything but a lousy snapshot." I could tell Joe didn't believe me. He had this look of "I have faith in you. I know you'll make a good picture. After all, this is important." I had only a minute or two because we were supposed to be leaving in the vans that were to take us back to the hammer-in venue. What do I do?
I was wearing this black fleece vest which I took off, turned inside out (figured I'd use the clean side) and lay it on top of a pile of junk and placed the knife and sheath on top of the fleece. I had a flash but I knew I couldn't just aim the flash at the knife and get anything other than hideous reflected light etc. So I tried bouncing the flash off of the ceiling and walls around me but the light was just sucked out into the darkness. In desperation I tried bouncing the flash off of a curved surface of one of the flourescent fixtures near by (bulbs in this one were dead - no light) and managed to get the shot below. Dumb luck I guess - but it turned out pretty good.
It's amazing what people expect some times, only because photography is not their thing so they don't know what's involved and they literally think 'point and shoot' will just about handle any situation. But it was fun to have a challenge and it was something that was obviously important to Joe Cordova - something that had a lot of emotional voltage attached to it. I didn't want to tell him 'no' but I didn't want to give him a lousy picture either. It was kind of a tough spot to be in.
10-13-2005, 06:40 PM
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