On Being a Photographer - Part Four - About South African Colors

A couple of years ago, I shared a few thoughts on being a photographer. Some still ring true. Others have evolved. I tend to take pictures more often with my iPhone while I am travelling so that I can share them more easily with friends and family. Which doesn’t mean I am feeling like the careless tourists I described in one of my posts. Even when using my phone as a camera, I keep trying to take pictures I’ll be happy and sometimes even proud to share.

I still use my professional cameras and lenses. Of course. Much better definition and bigger files. This is very important if I ever decide to get some of the pictures exhibited in a gallery or published. Foresight, let’s say.

Taking pictures can still be a long process for me though.

I still remember the moment when leaving the MOMA in New York, I noticed reflections of Saint Thomas Church on a building across the street. I can’t remember why I did not take any pictures at the time. Probably because I had run out of film for my camera. I really felt frustrated for a while and I remember thinking: “I’ll be back. I have to come back!” One year later, I was back. First thing I did, I went to the MOMA. The reflections were still there of course, even better than the first time because the light was sharper. I took the pictures I had been turning over in my mind for twelve long months. I was very happy… and even happier when I was asked to exhibit three of them at the “Maison de la Radio” in Paris.

Sometimes my projects are best left in the pipeline because I honestly have no idea how they will evolve. Then I meet people, not necessarily other photographers and artists and we start talking about a thousand different ideas and there it happens. I suddenly know what I’ll be doing for a while.
 

I'll never forget the time when I got on a plane bound to Cape Town. I was carrying my cameras and lenses along. I kept thinking how silly this was. One small camera would have done the trick because I knew that this time, I would not be travelling essentially for pleasure. A huge part of this trip promised to be rather ghastly. At least that’s what I was thinking and believing while boarding.

And then… a miracle happened. And once again my life took another bend, maybe not the best one but one that should be very positive and get me places I felt I had to go back to without knowing how to reach them after such a long time.

Actually I was on my way to mend my life as a photographer. And I had no idea this would or could happen.

South Africa has sparked off an new awareness of color as such in me. Color had always played an important part in my earlier pictures of course but mainly as a medium to enhance or to emphasize what I was trying to express.

Thanks to the magnificent sceneries and the amazing light in South Africa, from the Western Cape to the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, color became vital, truly essential and even crucial in my work. I became aware of this profound change in my assessment of my surroundings after spending one week in Kruger Park. We had decided to go to Kruger mainly to fulfill a dream. I also wanted to try my hand at wildlife photography, a real challenge for me.

We had wonderful field guides and trackers and we did have incredible and very close encounters with lots of beautiful and impressive wild beasts . I took (a few) great pictures I am very proud of. But what really amazed me was that whenever I climbed aboard our safari car for a game drive, in the morning and in the afternoon, I never felt under stress about sighting the big five or not. I had fallen so much in love with the Kruger scenery and its infinite range of tones that I left the park with countless pictures of the bush and the trails illuminated by the morning or the evening sun rays or shrouded in mystery by cloudy skies.

In South Africa, it was a lot about getting the right settings to bring out the right hues and making the most of the magnificent light.

Now to make this story a little bit shorter… I have to tell you I have been an associate member of the “Société des Artistes Français” (The Academy of French Artists) ever since January 2004. Long story. I entered their yearly show at the Grand Palais in Paris for the first time in 2000 until 2012 when for personal reasons, I decided to stop exhibiting pictures for a while either at the Grand Palais or in galleries.

This year, on my way back from South Africa, at the end of my second trip there, I decided to present a new project to the jury (this is mandatory for “new” artists and associate members as well). I was determined to start exhibiting again in art galleries if my project was accepted in its entirety or even only partially. Time had come for action, I thought.

I did not procrastinate as usual. I sent a file to the jury. Four pictures which I arbitrarily called “South African Colors” and which were characteristic of my awakening to color as such. Choosing them was difficult because I tend to be very emotional about pictures I like. And there were so many pictures I loved from my two trips to South Africa.

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There were the white sand dunes. Such a luminous whiteness highlighted by light green succulents below clear deep blue skies.

 

 

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There was this early morning picture in Kruger Park. A long forgotten mossy-like water hole. Lifeless water. A very strange and forsaken place. A symphony of many green shades. A study in green, brown, blue and grey.

 

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And the mountains close to Franschhoek. The ardent rusty-red laterite, the rugged greyish mountains, the intense blue cloudy skies and the vegetation, once again all shades of green.

 

*

Several weeks ago, I got a mail from the president of the photography department. The members of the jury have chosen one picture, the fourth one. At their request, it will be printed in a very large size. It then deserved a new title. I called it: “Vertigo, South Africa”. 

Not only because the conditions in which I took the picture were rather extreme. But mainly because South Africa does make me feel dizzy in many ways.

Almost at the center of the picture, one dark cormorant is flying very low over some dazzling white eddies. Exactly what I was hoping for, a cormorant with spread out wings and straight neck above the foam. The perfect shape and the most incredible contrast - black over white. The second cormorant on the right was a complete surprise. I discovered it after downloading the pictures on my computer. It is still diving below the emerald water and trailing behind him a thin streak of bubbles. The kind of picture you take without even realizing it can turn out this beautiful. Lucky day!

Showing “Vertigo, South Africa” in the Grand Palais in Paris, in February 2017, may well lead me to a new beginning as a photographer.

*Good Luck, and Good Night*

My Travel Book - Bull's Eye! (Kruger Park, South Africa)

Early November 2014, we met Popeye in Johannesburg and the three of us went off into the unknown… Kruger National Park. Not quite though. It had taken a lot of planning with a very nice woman from Siyabona Africa to make reservations almost at the last minute (end of August 2014 for the first week of November 2014!). We were to spend one whole week in Kruger Park and we’d be staying in three different private lodges, in three different areas of the park which would be a perfect dream come true!

The first lodge, Kings Camp, belongs to what’s called “the Greater Kruger Park”.  Its full name is “Kings Camp Timbavati Private Nature Reserve”. We flew there on the 2nd of November, 2014.

When you are staying at lodges, the game drives (two per day) are done in safari four-wheel drive cars. Usually in an open Land Rover unless you are inside the Park and then the Land Rover or the Toyota has to have a roof. Plus you are never on your own. You are with a field guide or “ranger” and his tracker. You are not supposed to leave the car unauthorized and it is strictly forbidden to talk in a loud voice, to stand up or to move around in the car whenever you’d feel like taking the best picture ever… Just sayin’.

In Kings Camp, the Land Rovers are roofless. The field guide is driving and has a rifle within arm’s reach. If there is any danger, his instructions are to shoot to kill. Kind of scary, I know when all you want to do is to take pictures… peacefully after all. And then you learn to live with it. Actually you forget about the rifle very quickly.

The tracker is facing the “whatever” can appear suddenly and his seat is not at all comfortable, said Swee’Pea who couldn’t resist to try it out. But this is the place where tracks can be seen at best…

The first and the second drives were quite uneventful even though we spent quite a long time watching a young female leopard, several buffaloes and a couple of rhinos. They weren’t very close to us. And it was obvious that they were very used to the cars from the reserve because all they did was to observe us briefly while they were going about their business, looking utterly bored by the way!

The savannah was more or less what we had expected to see in Kruger, maybe a little bit more desolate than we thought it’d be. The skies were mostly grey and cloudy which boosted the bareness. November is the beginning of summer but there hadn’t been much rain in winter either. Nothing to compare with the drought Kruger Park has been going through for more than one year though.

That afternoon, we drove around past the waterhole. It was mid-afternoon already so no wild beasts around. Too late or too early!

And then there he was - our first bush elephant in the wild. A bull. “Not very old”, said our ranger. Elephant bulls live on their own while the females gather together with the calves until mating season.

I wanted to take pictures. Who wouldn’t? The elephant was quietly watching us, leaning against the skinniest skeleton of a tree. Later on, I was reminded that our ranger then made a strange decision. He switched the engine off. I don’t think I noticed. I was in the mood “I-am-taking-pictures-and-don’t-ask-me-to-notice-anything-else-around-me”.

For a long time or what seemed to be a long time and actually was a very, very short time according to my camera clock, the bull watched us from behind the tiny trunk. During exactly 59 seconds. Not very friendly because anyway who can expect friendliness from a wild animal even when your mind gets totally distorted from watching too many Disney movies… or you have been dealing with tamed animals in zoo-like facilities.

No. This elephant bull was watching us very inquisitively. He knew there was “something” there except that there was silence where there should have been a motor running. (We learnt much later on that they have been experiencing problems with electrical cars in Kruger. Wild beasts are used to the purring of the engines and not to the cars per se. They are born and live with that sound around them. They recognize engine sounds but not cars. Electric engines are very silent. Take away the sound and the animals will tend to feel they are in danger when facing silent cars, the “unknown” for them. When the park was trying out a few electric cars, rangers were faced with unusual aggressiveness from the “Big 5”. End of electric cars in Kruger National Park, so far.)

So no engine running. But… and I guess this was really wrong… There were three people taking pictures in the car. A nice Australian honeymooning couple sharing a camera, Popeye and me. And I was probably and by far the most active of them all, producing rather loud clicks at regular and close intervals.

The place where we had stopped was rather quiet. So just imagine: “Click! Click! Click!”…

The bull probably decided that enough was enough. He had to investigate. He took one step forward. Click! Two steps forward. Click! He did not even start trumpeting which meant that he was not this upset. He just kept on coming straight at us. Which was for me the most perfect angle I could have dreamt of. He was exactly at right angles to the side of our car, coming directly towards me since I was the one sitting right behind the ranger. Such a perfect spot!

 

 

 

 

I kept shooting and shooting. He kept moving forward and forward. What a sight! (Through my lens, of course.) I loved the way he was swinging his trunk with every step which was becoming more and more determined. Oh, what a sight! I kept shooting. I was not in a hurry. Wow, this elephant was such a magnificent bull. Besides being our first wild bush elephant!

And then, he loomed up almost unexpectedly extremely large!

 

I then heard the young bride say something nervously, a few words I did not really catch, so totally hypnotized by this encounter and still clicking away.

Popeye was sitting on my left. He bent towards the ranger, gave him a not so friendly little tap on the shoulder and said: “Let’s move off. Now!”

And we moved off, just like that, giving him a wide berth. The bull looked bewildered. So this had been a car all along… after all! He turned around at once and walked away, taking long, placid and stately steps. We managed to follow him for a while. 

 

 

I was feeling a little bit irritated though. This had been such a perfect moment… for a photographer!

They were all very nice to me. Never tread on a photographer’s toes when she thinks she is hoarding up great pictures. Just wait…

We had an excellent sundowner in the middle of nowhere, at sunset, all  together. We did not talk about the elephant. The young couple was flying back to Sydney the following morning so there was a lot of small talk and it was fun.

I had enough time to download the pictures of the afternoon drive before dinner was served. And then I had a real moment of panic! I remembered having to zoom out and constantly bringing the bull into focus. I remembered feeling very nervous because this was the first time I was taking pictures of a wild animal on the move.

But I had not fully realized that from 4:40:35 p.m. to 4:42:59 p.m., the bull had gotten much closer to me than I ever felt he was.

From over there...

 

 to there…

This elephant never displayed any real anger though. He probably had been rather distressed by the sudden lack of sound of a motor and by my clicks which would explain why our ranger and the tracker were not overmuch worried. The question remains: What would he have done when meeting with the physical obstacle of the car, assuming that our ranger would have allowed him to get that close?

Grab my camera? Definitely not! Push the car away which would have meant overturning it? Hard to find a really satisfying new ending to this story because as they say, all’s well that ends well!

All in all, spending one week in Kruger Park, going on eleven game rides and having many very close encounters with the Big 5 plus lots of other wild beasts, we felt perfectly safe there. Certainly safer than walking around Cape Town or even in Paris at night, waving an iPhone like a red rag!






*Good Luck, and Good Night*

Picture of the Day - Mammodouy's Pictures

My faithful readers have noticed that I have become a very erratic writer. It is becoming harder and harder for me to write on a regular basis even though I am still full of imagination. Ideas keep buzzing through my head and then the humdrum routine of everyday life overrides my literary and artsy longings.

One cause may be that my life has become rather complicated those past two years. I travel a lot more and I move around a lot for many reasons I won’t dwell upon. It’s rather boring! The funny backwash being that sometimes, I feel I am turning into a suitcase. Does a suitcase write stories? No, it does not. But since I am not really turning into a suitcase either, there must be another reason for my obvious lack of work.

 This is when and where I have to acknowledge one major failing. I am a born procrastinator. There are tons of real and irrelevant and certainly always useless things to do that freeze me up! I have written a post about this. Enjoy!

On the other hand and because life is never all right nor all wrong, I also happen to loose my grip on writing regularly because I get most of my ideas from things I see, places I go to and pictures I take and when things and places and pictures get too plentiful, my willingness to write (and maybe my brain too) tend to slacken off as if my thoughts were caught in a traffic jam…

I end up spending a lot of time gazing at clouds, smelling flowers, watching the sea or the passers-by, enjoying life with the greatest intellectual laziness and of course, picking a book which I will read from cover to cover with great joy and then a second one and… and… and days go by. Sometimes I even forget there is a world where I do enjoy using words of my own and telling stories.

In June 2014, I wrote a post I called : “Writing Interview - Mammodouy’s Way”. It still is very relevant.

Mid 2015, I decided to get a very professional website besides my professional website. A website that would allow me to combine my two blogs - “The Storyteller” and “Mammodouy’s Pictures” which most of you are not even aware of plus a couple of “serious” writing projects.

I got in touch with a web designer. A woman. We got along just fine until November 12 when we exchanged our last mails. I had sent her important information she needed sorely. She had answered me immediately, telling me that progress on my website would go very fast from then on and that she’d get in touch with me, before the end of the following week, so that we’d meet for a follow-up as soon as possible.

For those of you who don’t really keep track of dates, the following night was the night of the terror attacks on restaurants and the Bataclan. November 13, 2015.

My web designer kept silent from that day on. I am pretty sure that she did not die on the 13th of November because the government issued a list of the names of the victims several weeks later. But there was no list of the wounded, of course. No list of people who had lost their loved ones or of people who were suffering from PTSD, for obvious reasons.

I know I should get in touch with her company. At first, there was the shock, even if I wrote that I was not feeling hatred and that I was not afraid, I now realize that I spent a few months totally shell-shocked. Time went by with no news from her, maybe for the same reasons that distress me… And now it is getting harder and harder to get on the phone. I feel numb.

All this to explain why from time to time, one of my posts from the “Storyteller” blog will be called “Picture of the day”. You’ll find under this title the picture posted that day in “Mammodouy’s Pictures”. I encourage you to go look at it in the blog itself because the settings there are much nicely fit for pictures than in a blog dedicated to stories! And the picture will be much bigger!

I published many pictures in that blog, starting in August 2010 till now. They are pictures I really like but that I don’t think I’ll ever exhibit. Except that life is always full of surprises. One of them will make its way to the Grand Palais in Paris in February 2017.

But this is another story…

Here is my "Picture of the Day" (yester-day actually...) - "Could This Be Africa Floating Away from Table Bay, South Africa?"

A few words about this picture - Last March, I was on top of Table Mountain, in Cape Town, South Africa. It was windy and rather cloudy. I was looking at Robben Island in the distance and all of a sudden I spotted the shadow of a cloud on the ocean below. The cloud itself was banal. Just a cloud already frayed by the wind. But this shadow into the light became priceless... Short-lived and yet such a symbol...





*Good Luck, and Good Night*

 

On Being a Photographer - Part Three

Back from a trip to Patagonia, a friend said to me: “When I got home and I looked at the pictures I took, I realized that I had not seen much of the real McCoy.” (He meant Patagonia, of course.)

I looked at him quite flabbergasted at his remark. For a few seconds, I did think he was joking. He was not.

“I was so busy taking pictures that I guess I forgot to look around very much.”

There we go. Not looking around but storing up pictures for long winter evenings.

“Hard for me to understand,” I said. “Because I only take pictures when I am truly looking at things if and when I can relate to them. Whether they are landscapes or people.”

He looked rather taken aback.

“Well, you see, the picture I am about to take is already fully created in my mind when I release the shutter otherwise I would not take it.”

He made clear he was quite concerned. What was I talking about? Don’t I ever click away madly while visiting a new place, so worried to miss a very important piece of the booty, so to say.

“Well, I don’t. Even when I am taking shot after shot of my son’s wakeboarding feats because even then I tend to anticipate his motions.” (Which by the way does not mean that all the pictures are successful but that I have watched all his moves.)

I knew what he was talking about because ever since the advent of digital photography, I have watched tourists and friends and their new way of mass-producing memories.

I remember the very first time I noticed people walking around Paris, barely glancing at the monuments only to click away at them. Some of them kept walking without even stopping one second to make sure the picture wouldn’t be blurry. And I have seen enough fuzzy pictures on Facebook and so many blogs (even travel blogs) to know that actually the world around me is changing drastically.

 Well, actually I don’t care this much whether or not my friend will take time to look around and take the picture that will become his memory to cherish. Maybe it's fun to discover one whole country while sitting in front of one’s computer... after all.

I don’t care about blurry pictures either. As long as people are happy with them. (Which I doubt though but I am bitchy there, I know.)

Now people take loads of pictures which they unload (upload) on their computers through wi-fi or whatever. And obviously there is no need whatsoever to do some sorting out... the main idea being that they have been there and here is the proof including having fun which is just fine of course... But isn’t it possible to have fun and yet take good and enduring pictures? Besides the fact that nowadays with digital cameras, it is so easy to check the results on the spot and to take some more original and innovative pictures... at once.

So I feel a little bit dumbfounded sometimes... not getting suddenly old and lost... but dumbfounded because I still believe there is joy in loving to see something well done... and that abundance won’t necessarily be useful unless it is some vital part of our new leisure and consumer society. Not vital at all for me. Maybe my problem in a very fast ever changing culture which should not shower mediocrity with praise though.  There, I said it.

Last week, I went boating with one of Swee’Pea’s friends who fell in love with photography a few years ago. He’s good at it. He really is. But it is not his bread and butter. He loves to take pictures, that’s all.

I enjoy watching him, which happens a lot. Because when he is around I don’t feel like a brontosaurus anymore. (He is my son’s age.)

He has the same (my) way of looking around, of exploring the moment and opportunities and of taking a picture, slowly, carefully and purposefully. Which does not mean that it will be perfect but that he will be very happy with it. And it also means that if it is not perfect (the way he would have liked it to be -- his idea of perfection), he will learn from his mistake. This can be a lot of fun too, you know.

By the way, I am not the embodiment of perfection. Far from it. But I try to learn from my mistakes. All-the-time! (Only talking about photography!)

But from the day I started to take pictures (quite early in life), I tried to take pictures that would be worth looking at for ages... and this started happening a long time before becoming a professional photographer.

Let me tell you a story to make my point.

There was a time when digital photography did not exist. No kidding. A time when once the film was exposed, you had to get it processed of course which could take a long time sometimes.

A few months after my brother died, I started to consult a shrink. One day he had a brilliant idea to get me out of my house in Brittany where I was quite consumed with grief and rather unable to move forward.

I was to grab a camera and start walking on the beach below my house. I did not have to take pictures which sounded just fine because I was not in the mood to do so. Besides the fact that at the time I was still working as a translator.

And this is how I started to work on a project that still fascinates me: catching fleeting emotions through materiality thus understanding more or less the transient nature of life.

So there I am, in Brittany. Walking on the beach usually with husband, kids and friends around. On the look-out for the “IT” to happen... which after a while did not stop me from taking pictures of kids and friends and boating outings and... and... Quite enjoyable too.

One late cloudy afternoon, kids and husband wanted to go take a walk among boats moored on the beach. The sea was ebbing. There was enough water left for moorings and hulls to be mirrored on the golden sands. The reflections were quite weak though because of the clouds.

Because I was always waiting for those fleeting miracles, I was ready. My eye was my camera and my camera was my eye. I was totally ready. All set. (At the time I was working with a completely manual camera.)

I am “looking” at some mooring, its chain and its shadow. And the miracle happens. A ray of sunlight cuts straight through the clouds. My “eye” is all set and my fingertip presses on the shutter release. In a split second. And the sunbeam vanishes. One picture and only one.

Those were times when I sometimes had to wait for several weeks before getting my films developed. I remember how hard it was at the time, waiting without knowing for sure whether my fingertip had been quick and steady enough to capture this transient instant in the right framing.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Pure happiness. Definitely.
 
And I keep on walking with wide open eyes. Looking at life attentively.














*Good Night, and Good Luck*

On Being a Photographer - Part Two

Writing is a very cathartic activity for me except that when life gets so hard that I no longer feel like I am really alive but more or less bent on surviving, then I quit writing at least not for an audience, not for you, my dear readers.

I keep on taking pictures though... almost everyday. This is so vital to me that most times, I feel like I am truly breathing in and out three, ten, twenty times better whenever my eyes notice something worth catching and even better something worth keeping.

Not that my treasure is really growing nowadays.

I have been thinking a lot about this. My best pictures “ever” are quite behind me. And not at all because of my quite defective vision. And not because I am getting older and backward-looking either.

Now don’t take me wrong. I still take good pictures, some of them being nonetheless very good. Thank you. But maybe my passion is getting dampened, a little bit like when a couple gets older. Man and woman still in love but in a more sedate way. Still good but not as inspiring as before nor as breathtaking as during the first years. And yet with a lot of happiness and a sense of fulfillment after all.

There were times though when my mind was truly overflowing with thousands of ideas and my eye behind the camera would do the trick. Ideas metamorphosing into challenging pictures.

Now I keep on taking “pretty” pictures while working on a few projects without caring very much whether my pictures will end up in an exhibit or not. There were times when I had to put on an exhibition every few months or I’d feel like a failure. I was putting a lot of effort into sharing my work. Now this is more like: whatever happens...

Is this wisdom? Have I learnt to be patient at last? One thing I know for sure is that I am not talking about renunciation but something more like serenity after all.

So there I am, still taking pictures.

I use all sorts of cameras. Small ones, easy to carry around. Professional ones. Impressive lenses too. So impressive that when I am walking around with my very technical-looking Nikon round my neck, people stop me and start asking me questions about taking pictures. Well not really about taking pictures but more about me being a photographer. And actually not really people as in men and women but men only.


Men do that all the time. They can’t refrain from doing it. I call this the phallic complex.

(So far I still have to meet the girl who would be so interested by some large and heavy camera and lenses that she’d walk up to me and start asking rather stupid questions. Girls talk a lot about cameras when they want to buy one though. Sharing information can be quite enjoyable then.) 

Two weeks ago, I was walking through a very charming medieval village in Brittany. Looking around. Taking a few pictures of course. I walked by a couple of men sitting at the terrace of a very small café. Actually I would not have noticed them. But then I heard...

“Using such a camera pays off, doesn’t it? I am sure that all your pictures are excellent.”

Usually I don’t answer this kind of comment. But his remark really got on my nerves. I stopped, took a good look at the man. He was nice actually. My age. Phallic complex again, I know.

“Well actually I am the one who takes excellent pictures. Because my eye is right behind the viewfinder and my finger on the shutter release. I am the photographer after all.”

I turned towards Popeye who was right behind me. He was sporting a very nice camera too. But he is a man, right?

We had a good chuckle over it once we were driving away. But honestly I hate this kind of remark.

Were I rich enough to buy a Stradivarius, would this incredible violin transform me into an excellent concert violinist because it would start playing on its own?

Come on!

I know that this can become a serious problem for many would-be photographers. (I am not being derogatory there.)

For quite a long time I was pretty happy with cameras of average quality, mainly because I could not afford those quite expensive cameras professional photographers have to use. And I learnt to master photographic techniques with those quite “humble” cameras.


Why do professional photographers need those impressive cameras? Mainly because they are asked to provide high-quality pictures. Getting high-quality pictures calls for high-quality equipment. (Especially since most professional exhibits require rather large format prints.)

But on the other hand, high-quality equipment does not necessarily ensure excellent pictures unless you are good at taking them.

Nothing could be simpler actually!

And this is the reason why most of the time I am buying my top-of-the-range cameras and lenses secondhand and yet brand-new. (Would-be photographers [and I am uncomplimentary there!] buy them only to become disheartened very quickly when they don’t get those wonderful pictures they have been told they’d take so easily. And they end up selling them a few weeks later... So sad.)

I usually buy my cameras and my lenses from some stranger who was led to believe that owning a Stradivarius would turn him into Yehudi Menuhin.

Do not worry though... I do not believe that I am the next Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange or Robert Adams or...

Sometimes I wish I were. I am not. 

But I sure know how to play my Stradivarius-Nikon-whatever... 













*Good Night, and Good Luck*

On Being a Photographer - Part One

Last August, Popeye and I were invited to a wedding.

The bride-to-be had asked me to be their official photographer. After all, I had been their photographer whenever they wanted/needed pictures taken (free of charge, of course). A lot of pictures of their children and last but not least the pictures for their wedding announcement .

I was still feeling quite tired at the time because of the aftermath of the pulmonary embolism... And on second thoughts... She no longer was as sweet as she used to be and I simply did not feel up to being a slave (to my craft) from the wee hours in the morning while she’d be getting ready for her big day until very late at night... So I turned down this dubious honor.

She hired a photographer (a young man) to do the job. “This is so expensive, Olive! You wouldn’t believe it!” They are quite well-off so she did not manage to make me feel guilty...

At the wedding reception, we were seated with the bride’s mother and her partner plus the groom’s father and his new wife. (Meccano ® families which I usually like.)

We introduced ourselves since they were not overly friendly. We were brief but we never forget our manners!

After a while, the bride’s mother looked at me: “Oh, now I know who you are! You are the photographer who took pictures of my grandchildren and the pictures for the wedding announcement. You take good pictures. Why did you refuse to take the pictures of my daughter’s wedding?”

This was embarrassing, I have to admit. People were obviously getting a little bit worked up not to say inebriated.

I laughed. “I am not too much into wedding pictures.” (And my nose started to stretch... I was turning into Pinocchio. I have taken tons of wedding pictures and I love doing it... for real friends.)

“But you are taking pictures all the time, aren’t you?”

Well, actually I am. All-the-time. She was so right. Some people walk their dogs. I walk my cameras. All-the-time.

And occasionally I take a very good picture that will end up being exhibited in nice galleries and art fairs... Some even encounter a (very bright) art collector and I have to let them go. This does not happen all the time, don’t worry.

This was definitely not something I wanted to tell the lady. So I mumbled: “Oui, oui” while I was fiercely kicking Popeye’s ankle so that he’d get the message to keep mum.

She took a deep breath. Honestly she did.

“Well, it is a nice hobby for a woman.”

I giggled. Nervously, very nervously.

“Well, this is not a hobby. You see, this is my job. I work full-time as a photographer. Except that I am not really into wedding pictures.”

She was staring at me. They all were staring at me while Popeye was fiercely kicking me under the table.

“Well, the way I see it, Madame Olive, this is not a real job. For me, it is a hobby, a nice hobby. For a woman. Period.”

The reception was nearly over. Time to go home, Popeye!

The most painful part being that at the time, I was going through some dry spell if I may say so. It happens from time to time. Sometimes you need to do some real soul-searching to make headway. Sometimes what you’d really like to be working on remains at the planning stage for the longest time, so it seems. And then one day, your finger releases the shutter and there you go... deep into the unknown. Pure bliss!

Meanwhile I keep walking my cameras... One never knows!




*Good Luck, and Good Night*