close your eyes and hope for the best

Macro photography, crescent wrench. (click image to enlarge)

It’s not quite as fantastic as having Raquel Welch course through your veins but when you get REALLY close, ordinary household objects take on an extraordinary appearance… I’m not going to go all “Zen” on you but you’ve got to admit there’s some crazy shit going on in there if you look close enough.

Why is it we always have to look so far away? Why don’t we take a look at the things that are right in front of us? Perhaps it’s because man is an exploratory creature, always wondering what is over the distant horizon. Sometimes we take for granted the things we have right where we are.

I found it surprising that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the seafloor of our deep oceans. The recent interest in global warming is an encouraging sign of a renewed interest in maintaining a healthier planet. Let’s hope this trend continues.

Bringing the distant up close is a marvelous capability of modern optical science. What a thrill it must have been for Galileo to first look through his first working telescope model. Later with the development of photography, the magnified image could be enjoyed by the masses by capturing those images for all to see.

As photographers, we know the farther away you can be from your subject and still get the subject to “fill the frame” can be a very expensive endeavour. Still, there is something special about a razor-sharp image of a distant animal or scene, details that elude the naked eye pop out. Anyone who has ever poured over a giant panoramic cityscape or landscape and said, “I never knew that was there” or checked out a crowd scene and thought, “man there’s some weird-looking people out there!” can surely agree.

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Bison fighting near Firehole River Yellowstone National Park USA.
(click image to enlarge)

I lift my camera… My left eye is on the bulls, my right on the circling herd of cows and juveniles which are now barreling across the flat open land right towards me. I focus on the fighters, releasing the shutter for a full second… [I’m] ready to run. And run I did, with about 40 tons of meat chasing me down.

A normal afternoon, down by the Firehole River on the west side of Yellowstone, watching the Bison from the side of the road, a few people coming and going. Typically I like the going part of that sequence, so I can be alone to observe their behaviour unimpeded. It’s the annual fall rut and tension is reaching its usual sexual high. Bulls are herding their quarry away from other rampant males as the occasional flurry of dust draws my attention to a scuffle in a distant group. The playground attendant steps in between and calm resumes.

I’m squatting by the side of the road, the car within safe reach, 10 yards behind me. Like a jealous schoolboy, one male in particular is shepherding a female away from anyone who approaches. This is fairly easy going for him, as most of the nearby bulls are juveniles with weak poker faces. They push, he re-raises, and they quickly fold their tails between their legs and sit out the next hand.

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Hockey game, Halifax Nova Scotia Canada. (click image to enlarge)

Just this past week I had yet another editor going to do wonderful things for my career if I could give him a photo from a local hockey game… I am much quicker with my response now… “are you working for free? No? Well sorry, neither am I.”

I am often left in amusement when photo editors believe they have the God given right to belittle a photographer’s skill to the point of asking for images that are free of charge. About 12 years ago, I had the opportunity to photograph an IMSA motor sport race near Halifax. Having photographed a few political conventions during my “stringer” days, I played a hunch: Sure enough, sandwiches and cold drinks were in the press lounge.

It was in the lounge that I met a Ferrari staff photographer who had the strangest set-up I had seen. Digital cameras were just coming on board and this was my first look at one of these behemoths with enough umbilical cords to substitute as a wiring harness for that red horse in the back stretch paddock.

Over the course of the weekend, and between practices and time trials, this Italian photographer and I developed a great rapport. I told him of the local area and he apprised me of all things digital. It was amazing back then, in a matter of minutes he was shipping these images back to his head office in Italy. Meanwhile I was driving like mad to the local lab with film in hand, paying for rush processing so I could have the chromes by the next morning. My new friend provided some very useful hints as well to this neophyte, and I will share the most important advise with you: Stake out a corner where the cars have to slow down; it will be easier to focus and the cars will “bunch up” creating more action.

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1941: George with his first car, a 1940 Dodge. Set up by George: shutter pusher unknown
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A car was essential to cover these jobs….
I don’t remember what it cost or how I managed to pay for it. It turned out to be one of the most trouble-free cars I have ever owned and lasted me through the end of the war.

The well-known CPR photographer, Nicholas Morant, whom I met through contract CNR photographer Harry Rowed, was indeed a character. As one of the stories goes, one day in Montreal he put Harry up to going down to Craig Street with him and buying a beaten-up park bench from a second-hand store for $15. They had it delivered to Dominion Square. With their bench set down on Peel Street across from the Windsor Hotel, they waited for a policeman to pass by on his beat. When one came within sight, Nick and Harry peered furtively from behind their newspapers every minute or two, quickly drawing back, and making the officer wonder what kind of no good bums he had there. With the officer’s suspicion fully aroused, Nick and Harry folded their papers, picked up the bench and began to walk away with it. The cop blew his whistle and apprehended them. Still carrying the bench, the cop demanded they walk with him to the police call box on the corner. It was before the days when policemen carried radios. When reinforcements arrived, the officer was asked what was going on. He told them he had two felons he caught steeling a city park bench. Nick and Harry quickly professed they weren’t stealing the bench and produced their receipt from the Craig Street store. I never heard what happened to the park bench after that. Such were the type of live wire and fun-seeking guys I planned to emulate in my photographic career.

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