A few years back I made a 16" x 20" easel from foam core and placed it on a wooden crate down on my cramped little darkroom floor. (Starving artists must make do). I then reversed the enlarger on the base so I could project the image down from the table to the crate on the floor. With nice classical or jazz music playing in background, I'd be in my own quiet world, working late into the night. One time I'd just placed a 2¼" negative in the carrier and bent down to focus, stretching my arms up trying to reach the focusing knob. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I was startled by something that scampered across the easel. It seemed to be the largest roach I'd ever seen, or maybe a mouse. (I must say, I don't have a lot of roaches around, but I don't see many mice either.) Anyway, for someone who thought they were tough I was surprised at how scared I got. I envisioned this thing running right up my pant leg! In a split second I'd turned on the lights and grabbed the closest weapon I could find, a flimsy 3' wooden ruler that would probably snap on anything I'd hit.
With heart
racing, I cautiously looked around the base of the easel but found
nothing. I finally calmed down after not finding whatever it was and
turned the lights off and went back to work. After I turned the
enlarger light on the creature re-appeared running back on top of the
easel. I got a better look at the size, about 4 or 5 inches long,
and fast. I went through the whole process again, still with no
luck finding it. I soon became less scared and more
mystified. How can this thing hide so quickly? Three times
a charm as it happened again, but this time I opened up the enlarger
head and discovered something. A baby moth the size of a gnat had
been running around on top of the negative, getting enlarged right
along with it!
From David Halpern, a photographer from Oklahoma:
Here is one of my more amusing field experiences. (There are a lot more where this came from.) One summer morning in 1988, while serving as artist-in-residence at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, a friend and I had our large format cameras set up on a less frequented trail well below the canyon rim. Each of us was concentrating on his own work and neither was attentive to what the other was doing. I was under my focusing cloth making adjustments when I heard a series of rather nervous, high pitched giggles coming from the area where my friend was working.
I came out from under my cloth to see what was going on and when I
looked in my friend's direction, I saw there were two people under his
oversized focusing cloth (one of those super size cloths with a silver
material on the outside to reflect the sun's heat). The second person
was a Japanese tourist with two 35mm cameras around his own neck. He
had been unable to contain his curiosity when he saw a photographer
"buried" behind his 4" x 5" and much to my friend's dismay had crawled
under the cloth without warning. Soon, the curious visitor was joined
by another member of his party and both of them spent several minutes
checking out the images on which we were concentrating. Neither of them
spoke English, and neither of us spoke Japanese; but we had no trouble
communicating with gestures. Their giggles were a reaction to their
surprise at seeing inverted images on the ground glass.
From an anonymous university photography teacher:
At the beginning of my last critique this semester I passed out a pop quiz to all of my intermediate and advanced students. I felt that some were slipping by this semester and I needed to define some of their grades with the added help of this "simple" quiz. It was a 20 question paper and I handed it out to about 28 students. Here are the best answers from question 8. Not all my students did not get it but the ones that didn't, well...really didn't.
8) SLR is an abbreviation for what?
Answer is Single Lens Reflex
Some interesting answers listed below
STANDARD LENS R.....?
SINGLE LENS REFRACTION
SOLAR LENS READING
STANDARD LIGHT READING
SLIGHTLY RETARDED (JUST KIDDING) SHUTTER LENS RELEASE
SHUTTER LIGHT RATE
SHUTTER LENS RELEASE (This one showed up on a number of tests. Cheating!
Is suspect).
SINGLE LENS REFLECTOR? REFRACTOR?
Granted, many of these students are from around the world and there is a bit of a language problem, but everything on this test is part of our vocabulary, in class, week after week........
From Dave Hills who formerly owned the Hills Gallery in Denver:
Your photo viewers may applaud this notion advanced
by Man Ray:
As the story goes, Man Ray was being chastised by a fellow painter for
his
use of a camera. The painter argued that a photograph was only capable
of
reproducing something exactly as it appeared. The strictly documentary
nature of the photographic medium, he said, limited the creative input
of the artist and therefore was forever stuck in a world of
reality....( no
doubt a surrealist speaking). In reply, Man Ray asked if the fellow had
a
girlfriend, and if so, did he have a snapshot of her. Proud of his
sensuous,
new, live model, the painter quickly produced a well worn, wallet sized
print, a full length nude, to demonstrate her beauty. Man Ray studied
the
image for a moment and returned it to the painter saying. " Very
lovely...a
pity she is so small."
Another story from Dave's gallery days:
As a former photo gallery proprietor, I do recall with a smile a lady
who
came in one morning earnestly seeking a large "picture" for reception
area
of her office. She published a small, monthly Bible study journal and
was
really hoping to find a copy of a "photograph" she had seen somewhere
else.
A friend had suggested she come to my establishment. I asked her to
describe the image. It was "really big" , she said, "and showed Noah's
Ark
perched on a mountaintop...and ...the sun was just coming out." I could
go on but will stop here....
From Ben Breard, owner, Afterimage Gallery:
I recently thought of this incident, and, as Dave Berry says, I am not
making this up. Occasionally I will receive a call from a salesman who
works for a company not normally associated with photography. This
fellow was with a publisher of graphics, and for some reason they had
published a portfolio of Hollywood portrait photographer George
Hurrell. It costs several thousand dollars, and I wasn't in the market.
But I couldn't shake this guy. He kept going on and on, getting more
and more excited about the portfolio. Eventually he said, "You know
that Hurrell was a master of lighting." I agreed, knowing that my
saying anything positive might push this guy over his emotional edge.
Then he said, "That photograph by Ansel Adams of that western town with
the moon: well, Hurrell did the lighting for that!" I have heard
photographers extolled before but never deified!
From Tom Tarnowski, a university-level teacher:
Student proposal for a final project: "I will be doing a photographic
story of a life, from beginning to end. It will consist of
approximately
8-10 pictures."
Here's an occurrence sent to us by photographer Rob Pietri of Colt's
Neck, New Jersey.
I was photographing the front of a museum in south Jersey with my 4x5
Sinar when a gentleman came up and asked me where the rest of my camera
was. Sensing that he was teasing, I said that there is plenty of
camera right here.
He smiled and then showed me what he was carrying under his arm. It was a painting of the Jersey Devil, a mythical legendary demonic creature that is said to haunt the New Jersey Pine Barrens. He said that he was going inside to see if it was worth anything. I complimented him on the painting and then asked very seriously, "Now did he pose for that or did he give you a photograph to use?"
He then gave me a look as if I were the Jersey Devil himself and
without
a word, quickly walked away. Apparently he took me seriously!
From another university-level teacher:
During my first semester as an adjunct instructor teaching
photo-history, I learned that taking anything for granted can be risky.
I spent the first half the term referring to "19th century
photography;" only to learn in the mid-term exam that almost every
member of the class thought I was talking about the 1900's.
When I taught a beginner’s class, I was amazed at how difficult it was for some students to remember the necessary sequence in making a print. Many of them would first get out a sheet of paper and put it in the easel; then they would put the negative in the enlarger and compose and focus the image on that sheet. This completed, they'd turn the enlarger off, set the timer and make the exposure---all on that same sheet of paper. They would ask, "Why is my picture so dark?"
I had a student in that same beginning photo class come to me in tears because every print she tried to make came out totally black. I went through every step of the process with her in the darkroom to determine what she'd done to fog the paper. But, she had the sequence "down pat" and in fact seemed to be a very careful worker. When I told her I couldn't understand why her prints were fogged, she said that she knew it couldn't possibly be due to defective paper---because the first thing she did after buying it was to take it home, open the package, and inspect every single sheet.
I asked how could she make this mistake after I'd spent so much time in class explaining the light-sensitive nature of photographic paper and she replied that she thought this only applied to ENLARGER light.
Another funny incident is when I asked a class of second-term photo students to write a very brief paper which would help me assess their experience level and long-term interests in photography. One student, apparently impressed by the potential of a career, described how if one became a really-really good photographer, one might someday win "the Pull It Surprise."
