bluetyger main

Issue 13 : March 1, 2002

Expo 67
Expo 67 Soviet Pavillion
Expo 67 Passport
Internet Links about Expo 67
High Risk Photography
Art Deco Roxy Theatre
1960 Campaign Buttons

High Risk Photography

I exaggerate madly.

A few days ago, some amusement related to another citation in the never ending evolution of Murphy's law in my life.

It was a very lovely late winter afternoon and I stopped to take some photos at one of my local favourite magic spots, which is good for photographic "steals" through all four seasons.

I was standing beside an elevated railway track bed (rails now gone) looking down a slight refrozen snow and icy slope to a pond which had a melting but still solid layer of ice. The light fell on it in a fetching manner and so I began to take some photos. I had brought from the car, my digital camera, my Pentaz PZ-1 (with a new lens Vivitar Series 1 19-35mm zoon lens), and also the Agfa Record III folding camera (tucked in my coat pocket with my light meter and three rolls of film.

Began with the digital camera. Over exposure problems. I moved my eyeglasses to see what was going wrong with my Canon G1 (turned out I had turned film speed from auto to 400 the night before for another shooting situation) and as Murphy would have it, the left lens popped out of my eyeglass frame landed at my feet bounced cheerfully and gymnastically down the slope and then slid gracefully down some refrozen snow and gently sailed onto the ice of the pond and finished in the middle of the ice, which was thin, somewhat melted and thus I was screwed.

I have been retightening screws on this eyeglass frame for a long time. Now and then the lens has popped out, but not so dramatically and terminally. I thought about trying to skitter down the slope about a 8 foot descent and get the lens, since the pond was only about a foot or so deep. But as I thought about it, I decided if I stepped out on the ice, it would break and the lens would disappear into the water of the pond that would come up above the ice. Sigh.

Luckily, I was only about 3 km from Victoria Harbour, my home base, so I drove home with my left eye screwed shut. Fascinating way to drive. I did take some photos with the other cameras but it was just too awkward to operate with one eye screwed shut like Popeye. I grew afeared that I might trip or drop one of the cameras or have Murphy intervene again in some unsuspected but not amusing except in hindsight sort of a way.

I was able to find an old pair of glasses. Ten year old (?) monstrous thick plastic frames, ugh. Actually, I was due to get a new pair of glasses anyway, altho the distance prescription is unchanged, the bifocal reading setting needs to be beefed up.

Murphy had some mercy. I could have been clambering somewhere simple like, The Grand Canyon or the Florida Everglades.

- William J. Gibson -

Original photos taken with
Kodak Instamatic 134
(126 film cartridge) in 1967.

Scanned with
Epson Perfection 2450
(600 dpi setting used)

Images manipulated using
Adobe Photo Elements,
brightness reduced by 10%,
contrast increased by 6%,
then reduced to 350 pixels width
and saved for the web.