I found that a very interesting "slice of life" tale... Thanks for sharing it with us, Paul!
keith whaley Paul Franklin Stregevsky wrote: > > My wife is Russian, and our family spent the weekend visiting her relatives > in Brooklyn, New York. Saturday night was the main event, the celebration of > her cousin Ilya's 50th birthday at a Russian restaurant. (The vodka flowed > like water.) > > I went armed with two SLRs: A Super Program and a Ricoh XR-P. About an hour > into the event, I began to have flash problems with both cameras and had to > quit. (The Super Program needed a new camera battery and new AAs in the > flash; the XR-P's dedicated flash was a freebie that I had been told "may > work erratically.") > > Just then, the "real" photographer arrived: a 50-something Russian man > sporting a Nikon digital SLR on a large flash bracket. It's just as well > that I can't shoot anymore, I thought; I wouldn't want to step on his toes. > > Well, this guy took maybe 20 pictures of people dancing and teenage girls > posing by the window. I brought him a stool to stand on to get a better > angle of the dancers, but he declined. > > Then he left. No table shots! (I hadn't taken any, either.) > > When I asked Ilya why the guy had taken so few shots, he explained how "it's > been proven" that each time you take someone's picture, you take away part > of their life energy. Whoever owns the print can hurt the person in the > picture by--I dunno--tearing up the photograph. Ilya didn't want a stranger > taking too many pics, not knowing what the photographer might do with them. > Three years earlier, my live-in mother-in-law wouldn't let us keep a candid > I had taken of my older daughter sleeping. "It's bad luck to be photographed > while you're sleeping." No wonder these people lost the Cold War. > > At around midnight, the photographer returned with mounted 8-by-10 color > prints at $10 each! They were sharp and well-lit, I thought. But several of > the relatives declined, saying that too many flaws showed up in their faces > or that he hadn't posed the girls well. "They look like your photographs," > my mother-in-law's sister explained to me. (Hey--I don't claim to be a > pro...or a poser!) > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
