[LargeFormat] Re: LargeFormat digest, Vol 1 #191 - 6 msgs

[Stein]

Dear Gordon,

    A message for you from another 52-year-old. Actually, a 53-year-old. Me.

     Have faith in yourself. If you have selected architectural photography
you know WHAT you want to to. If you have decided to do it as a retirement
job, you know WHY you want to do it. If you have a house and a family and a
settled neighborhood, you know WHERE you want to do it.

     You have an immense advantage over that supposedly tougher
competition - an awful lot of them don't have answers to these questions. If
you have those answers you are well on the way to success.

    HOW to do it? You have already started to look for professional classes.
Good. Take the good ones and learn and take the bad ones and learn to ignore
them. Remember that light is light and shadow is shadow and has been for
quite some time. Your planned subjects are all very slow moving. Thus you
get to use the little numbers round the bottom end of the shutter dial. You
get to use the big numbers on the diaphragm ring. The tripod is your friend,
also the flask of brandy and the thermal uderwear. Do not be afraid to wear
an orange vest with " Road Department " on it out in public as you set up
the tripod and camera - it saves a lot of pissy explanations. Note this also
works with the railways, but is only marginally successful in the the
women's change room at the swimming baths.

    You have already managed 30 years of raising a family so raising the
front standard of a monorail camera will be a piece of cake. Monorails may
occasionally collapse on you but they don't whine as much as kids....

   Please let us know how you get on.

    Uncle Dick

 PS: I have eschewed architecture for dance and glamour pictures. With a 4 x
5 Linhof in the studio. It is surprising what you can do when you don't know
what you are doing....