[Ansteorra] Flash Photography at events
Jay Rudin
rudin at ev1.net
Wed Sep 12 09:31:03 PDT 2007
Collwyn wrote:
>I had a question to put to everyone.
>
<snip>
>
> My question is, how do you feel about the use of flash at events?
The SCA is a co-op. That means that we make tens of thousands of
adjustments -- little moments that we accept less than the exact thing we
wanted, in order to let somebody else have what they wanted as well.
At most times at most events, at the time when you are trying to do
something, there's somebody else nearby trying to do something more
authentic, or less authentic, than what you're doing. The social contract
required for hundreds of people to get along when we are not in full
agreement about what we're doing comes in two parts:
1. Be unobtrusive with your modern thing, so it doesn't hurt the ambiance
of their persona thing.
2. Ignore somebody else's unobtrusive modern thing while you are doing your
period thing.
This has thousands of individual applications. The period pavilions go
near the list field, and the persona-driven moments avoid the plastic ones.
If you are cleaning the kitchen in mundanes and are called to court, throw
a cloak on, and we'll all try to ignore the blue jeans sticking out beneath
it. Throw a cloth over your cooler, and people will ignore the fact that
it's a cooler.
Taking pictures at court or tourney is done by backing away from it a
little and being as unobtrusive as possible. Don't stand at the edge of a
list field with a camera, don't put your camera over the king's shoulder to
take a picture of the new peer, etc. Like with every other modern thing we
do at events, the polite behavior is to be as unobtrusive, non-invasive and
low profile as possible
So when deciding how to take pictures, you must deal with a single crucial
fact: The absolute, most obtrusive, invasive, high-profile action you can
take with a camera is to use a flash in a dark hall. Nobody in the entire
hall can avoid it. It is the equivalent of shouting, "Hey, everybody,
look! Twenty-first century technology! This isn't a real court or a real
ceremony; it's a 21st century copy! Ignore the ceremony! Nobody else in
the hall except me is doing anything that matters, so all of you just drop
your ideals and goals and ambiance and persona so I can take my picture!"
Unless the ceremony matters, why do you want a picture of it? And if it
does matter, why would you be willing to distract everybody away from it?
Yes, I understand that the most important skill in preserving persona and
period ambiance is willing suspension of disbelief, and I can ignore
glasses, duct tape, aluminum pavilion poles, etc. But those things just
sit there dormant. A flash is a sudden moment of attention-grabbing
instant change.
Having said that, I need to make my adjustments as well. Whena flash goes
off, you won't hear me complain. All that the complaints do is keep the
flash uppermost in our minds. If a flash does happen, I want to forget it
as soon as possible and try to regain my focus on the ceremony and the
moment. I don't want to blow it out of proportion.
We don't have a knighting ceremony to produce perfect ceremony or to
produce perfect pictures. We have a knighting ceremony to produce a
knight. If, at the end, we have a new knight and a great ceremony and poor
quality pictures, it was a success. If, at the end, we have a new knight
and an interrupted ceremony and great pictures, it was a success. So,
ideally, you should ask the people most involved whether the flash would
bother them as much as it does me, and wheteher they would prefer a
flash-free ceremony or better pictures.
To all photographers: I like photos of events, and I have a bunch of them.
And I recognize that there are people who want that picture far more than
they want a ceremony uninterrupted by a flash event. But please, please,
if you are ever trying to preserve a ceremony of mine, don't use a flash.
I would *much* rather have a grainy, poor-resolution remembrance of a
ceremony that mesmerized us all than a perfect copy of the moment everyone
was distracted from the honor and the joys and the meaning of what we do
together.
Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin
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