[Ansteorra] Flash Photography at events

[Jay Rudin]

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