When you make a photo of people in color,
Ted Grant
you photograph their clothes.
But when you make a black-and-white photo —
you embody their soul.
Having woken up early in the morning you see near on a sofa a sleeping cat. Without hesitation, you take the camera which is always somewhere near and you take a picture, another one, the third one. Meanwhile you look the result, the cat has run away somewhere. You thinks it’s not important and postpone technics since photos are not good. Having had a bite and having washed, you stack the camera into a bag, where you send pair of spare objectives, just in case. You know that they will not be useful to you, but you always take them not to be upset because of the missed chance. After all sometimes the pledge of a successful picture consists not only in time to appear in a proper place, but also to be ready to film a concrete plot. To have time to wind the necessary objective, to expose all necessary options and to pick up a shot for composition. Only then you will be ready. At times it is necessary to be done in a pair of seconds. Otherwise everything is finished, the squirrel has escaped, the girl has turned away, and the birch has ceased to shake on a wind.
And here you are ready, you leave the house and go…you simply go. Still without knowing where. The main thing it to go and not to stay on place. Certainly the interesting moment can occur absolutely near, but, as a rule, as practice shows, to pick a little bit suitable shot it is necessary to run down the city half a day. You pass by show-windows of the shops, the big windows of the cafes still empty so early in the morning. And somewhere you hear a sound of the broom scratching the roadway round the corner. You seize quickly a long-focal objective and install it instead of the usual objective which remained from the yesterday’s visit of the activity. Quietly having reached the corner, you look accurately out and you see a picturesque old woman in special clothes and with the stirred up broom in hands. It stops and looks somewhere long way off. Probably she thinks how the dawn is nice or simply she is tired and her feet make her pain. You bring the camera to your eyes and do a pair of shots on a silent mode.
A bit later you film the late dawn over the river that flows across the city. You film it each time, but still cannot find that elusive smell of the morning smoke in which the old bridge thaws. You try again, again and again.
Suddenly the phone calls and you are distributed, having rejected all ideas and thoughts you run on urgent affairs where it is necessary to solve absolutely other questions. You will be so far from your creative searches.
But this fact does not excite you, absolutely not, absolutely. All this time you will think about the evening. When after a dinner toward the evening you will be able to make such a long-awaited and for a long time already planned creative photo session with the girl. The girl whom you are persuading to pose you a year in her best red dress against the sunset.
But what happens, why it always happen? When it is not so important for you, you easily catch unique shots and your hands don’t shiver, your breath doesn’t get off, and the model does not twitch. No, she poses well, very well, she is so natural, easy and without falseness and stiffness signs. Everything likes ideal, but you cannot concentrate and start to work in any way. The evening isn’t eternal, and the decline will soon leave, and the girl will simply send you away and never will come to pose you anymore, under any pretext. No, it is necessary to concentrate! For attention derivation you tell her the next foolish joke. Till she laughs you fast collect all your will in a fist and do the first shot. It is a unique shot with real emotions, a sincere smile and pure eyes. But she doesn’t like you have not warned her, she becomes angry and takes offence…A bit later you already go down evening city streets, you tell ridiculous stories accompanying them be constant sounds of a worked shutter. You come into the first cafe…in general, no more interesting shots happen during the whole evening.
Having come home at last late at night, tired as you are, you turn on the computer and look through the taken photos. You delete half there without reflecting. And among the remained ones you try to find something worth. You choose, crop, you look in color, but everything is not right. And then you convert everything into black-and-white scale. It likes better, but still something misses. And here you hit on that picture made casually and spontaneously. Here there is everything, the real emotions, a beautiful shot…the soul was reflected in this shot with no doubt…
And here you already fall asleep with a blissful smile in your soul and full comprehension of the fact that day isn’t lived for nothing, that you managed to make improbable…you managed to leave on a paper a print of someone’s fragile and escaping soul. And this image will be seen by others, will be seen tomorrow, and everybody will be able to admire it still very long…while there will be such a remarkable invention, as a photo.
