The first photography trip to SE Asia showed me that the Nikon slr and zoom I had was inadequate. I hasten to add that the problem was the zoom I had, as many Nikon lenses are wonderful. I returned armed with a better system, though, and then some. A Hasselblad medium format camera with Kodak HIE 120 Infrared film custom rolled and ordered from a guy in the US, film not commercially available and that could not be put through airport scanners or even exposed to light, that had to be hand inspected with the use of a dark bag. This meant demanding that security officials at every single security checkpoint at airports, in the post 911 period, did not open my cannisters or subject the film to the scanners, but instead do a hand check, open the cannisters in a provided dark bag, asking them to accept my assurances that everything was ok even though they were at no point to actually look at the film inside the cannisters: if the film had been exposed to light, either before or after it had been exposed in camera, it would have been rendered useless.
I had already used the infrared film successfully in Cambodia, for one of my favourite pictures of a carving, a dancer from Preah Khan in the Angkor Wat complex.
So I arrive in Ayutthaya, a past capital of Thailand, at one of the temple complexes there. I found a spot with a scene of a group of leaning stupae. I got out the Hasselblad with the HIE film I had got through the airport security checks, set up the tripod, composed, trying to get a scene with the stupae leaning to the right, exploiting the 2D aspect of a photo to suggest the naked foreground tree touching, perhaps toppling, the stupa to its right. A Hasselblad is a wonderfeul camera, but it is not a fast camera. You set it on a tripod. Compose carefully. Focus. Recompose. Check the exposure (there is no inbuilt meter). Set the shutter speed and aperture. Pull out the dark slide. Close the viewer hood. Take the picture. Wind on. Bracket, to make sure you nailed exposure, which is tricky with HIE Infrared film. You’re not looking through the viewfinder after the initial composition, as the viewer hood is down. Replace the dark slide. At the time I was insistent that no human soul creeped into my compositions. The tree and the stupae were going nowhere, so I took one, two, three exposures, bracketing, without recomposing. Replaced the dark slide. Unmounted the camera. Packed up the tripod. Had my holiday. Took the film back through customs. Same routine. Every airport, demanding a hand check through security.
When I get home and to the darkroom, I develop the negatives. One is underexposed, one overexposed, one just right, as expected. I set the best frame in the enlarger, print the picture, and discover that someone was actually walking through the scene at the time of the third exposure. I hadn’t seen them at the time, for all my care in making sure there was nobody in the scene when I was composing, as the viewer hood was down. All the planning, having the hassle and stress of getting the film through security checks for every flight, carefully composing the picture, and it was all ruined for the picture that I had had most hope for.
And then I looked closer. That person was my partner back then, who was walking around the site at the time. The Cat on the prowl. And it has to be admitted that her position within the composition was perfect.
Completely random.
Confy says
To me, having someone walking through makes the picture even better. It’s a nice picture! Pls show me by then.