Life Less Literary

It’s almost a truism that, whenever you most rely on it, some piece of photographic equipment is going to fail. This has certainly been my experience, although until now it has been limited to cheap and dodgy flashes and triggers which refuse to work when on a job, but then fire up fine the next morning.

And so when, for the first time, a strange woman walked up to me in a pub, spotted my camera, and started taking her clothes off, you could almost guarantee that something was going to go wrong. I fired off a few shots but then, shortly after hitting (I think) either 60,000 or 70,000 shutter actuations, my Canon EOS 20D stopped working. Auto-focus was fine, metering was fine, everything was fine, it just wouldn’t fire the damn shutter. I could even get the shutter to life using the sensor-cleaning shutter lock-up mechanism, but using the normal photographic mechanism yielded nothing. I changed batteries, lenses, even memory cards, but still no change. Looks like I have to take out one last additional mortgage on my house to pay the £200-odd to get the shutter fixed. Either that, or pay £350 for a new (refurbished) 20D, or £3000 for an EOS-1D Mk III. And then find some more money for lenses

Update: this morning, it works… slightly. I have to squeeze the button very hard, for about half a second, and then I generally get it to fire. This makes me think that the button, rather than the shutter, is what’s broken (auto-focus still works fine on a half-press of the button). Perhaps last night’s strange situation made me sweat too much, and the sweat got in the button and bust it?

(I started writing this post just over a month ago. Just spotted it in my drafts, hence it’s a little out-of-date).
Last night was wonderful! I did my first live-run as DanShotMe.com and it worked a dream. And I did plenty more too…

First up, I went to an open studios event at Persistence Works/Yorkshire Artspace. The event itself was a lot more fun than I’d expected, but even better I got paid to photograph proceedings (and I found out when I got there that after some internal negotiation, my initially rather small fee had been doubled!) I was worried that I wouldn’t get anything worthwhile, as I was a bit unprepared and very rushed, but in the event I got plenty of good photos.

After a whirlwind tour around Persistence Works, I headed back out of town to Jonny’s, where a Tajalli Vortex jam session was under way. Annabel, our new singer, joined us, and the resulting music was wonderful, she added a vital dimension, and at last our sound seems complete.

At 11pm, we packed up and Jonny and I headed over to Corporation. I’d told Mark, the owner of Corp, about my Dan Shot Me idea a couple of weeks ago, and he had seemed (if possible) even more enthusiastic about it than me. He rang me again the other day to ask when I was going to come down, so I thought it would be rude not to.

When we got there, Mark showed me around a bit and then let me loose to take some pictures. I was quite nervous at first, doing my usual: walking around and snapping surreptitiously while walking by, then scuttling off before someone has time to object. But then I started confronting people more directly, and at first some took offence but once I started handing out the badges and got

Had a funny ending to the night. I got into an argument with a bouncer because I’d taken a photo of a girl without asking her permission, and she got pissed off. We argued for about 10 minutes over whether or not I was allowed to take photos without asking permission, he asked whether I was a full-time professional photographer, I said no and he said he was so he knew what he was talking about and I didn’t. I told him most of the professional photographers I’ve come across aren’t worthy to kiss my arse, or words to that effect, which didn’t go down to well, but in the end he accepted that I was more-or-less, but very rude. I told him he was right and I didn’t give a shit. Then he went to have a long chat with the nightclub owner (the one who rang me when I was in London asking me to come and take photos). I had to wait outside the door, as if it was the headmaster’s office. Then the bouncer left and I went in to chat to the owner, who basically couldn’t give a toss that I was photographing people without their permission. Nice outcome!

I left then anyway, because my flash was on the blink and I knew I had more than enough good nightclub photos. It was 2am. I put my head up to the frosted windows of the Washington pub on the way back, just to try and discern whether any of the bar staff were still around. Somehow somebody spotted and recognised me through the glass (maybe it’s the beard), so they let me in, I got one last drink while they swept up, and a cab ride back home with the bar manager.

Today I bought a new lnes cap for my cmaera. God bless Ebay!

This is an idea which has been bubbling in my head since the weekend, when I spent half the night trying to hold together my flash and radio receiver, and the other half nursing tempremental electrical contacts, before finally bumping into somebody, smashing the receiver and losing the battery.

I have taped up the receiver so that it’s fairly secure, taped it onto the flash head so that the two don’t keep coming apart, and - most important of all - I have stolen a small piece of sparkly fishnet tights from Rowan, slipped it over my arm, and stuffed the flash inside. This means that I have a fully operational off-camera flash at arms length from me, while my non-camera hand remains free for vital tasks such as carrying beer. Sorted!

Tonight I’m off to the Vice student gig at Plug to test it all out. No doubt something will break, again, but hopefully my ingenuity will find a way around it.

I also got one of these to pack my kit in. It’s a bit bigger than I’d imagined, but really rather swish, and incredibly practical (well, I hope it is. The proof is always in the pudding…)