Hi all, Please put on your generous glasses for this message. I'll get to what the subject line refers to a bit further down.
First a few small notes, with some Pentax references. Some of you may remember that I once, around May last year, mentioned that I discovered some previously unknown and forgotten film footage from 1918-21 in an archive in Stockholm. What they showed was a number of Aland representatives petitioning for the Aland Islands to be returned to Sweden after some hundred years under Russian Imperial rule. (In the end Aland was forced to become part of the newly independent Finland, but was granted an autonomy.) I think I mentioned how I grabbed a fast shot off a screen and wrote an article on my finds, using that picture. (A lousy one, but I managed to make it quite usable in Photoshop.) Anyway, the discovery of these short clips made the news in all local media, people expressed their appreciation for my work et cetera. I also got involved in dealing with the Swedish Television, who owns that archive, in an effort to acquire copies of these films to be shipped to Aland. The sales departement tried to do their job well, but I got fed up with their attitude. I decided to write a message directly to the head of the company asking wouldn't it be an excellent idea to offer copies of these unique films as a gift to Aland. It took a while, but in December my idea materialized. The head of Swedish Television arrived with a small delegation to a meeting with the Aland minister for culture and education, the Swedish consul was there as well as some local prominences and a lot of media, press, radio and television. I was invited too, held some sort of "lecture"on the contents of those films, received some nice words for what I had achieved and was also interviewed by all the above media. A funny thing was, I also work as a freelance reporter and photographer, why - although not on a proper assignment - I had brought my MZ5 along to take a few pictures of the ceremony where the films were officially handed over, or rather a "letter of gift". (Unfortunately there was no way I could shoot a picture of myself sitting in a panel along with the minister and head of Swedish Television answering questions from the media, but it was great fun anyway, being - so to speak - on the other side, getting interviewed and shot instead of doing the interviews and shooting myself.) Both local papers ran close to full pages on the occasion and I was pictured as well. I hadn't thought about it at the time they were shooting the pictures, but the following day, in the picture of undersigned, was clearly visible a camera strap over my shoulder, clearly reading "Pentax"! I thought that was fun. And surely you wanted to hear about that. Didn't you? :-) (This got longer than planned. I'll split it into another message.) Lasse
