REFLE
REFLEXIONS
XIONS
Reeve scores an own goal. Can a penalty be avoided?
Occasionally things can go wrong, and “I wasn’t sure what to think of being The Polaroid looked fine just as the art
it’s a cruel fact of life that sometimes asked what my biggest photographic director wanted.
other peoples misfortune can be mistake was, they don’t happen often Then as luck would have it the sun came
entertaining. We set ourselves the
(honest) and when they do it usually out. Quickly I rattled off twelve pics got
challenge of getting photographers to
costs a lot of money so you try and the main man to change position and
own up to their own worst mistakes.
forget them quickly. shot another twelve. Sorted!
Here commercial photographer Chris
I packed up and rushed off to the lab.
Reeve reveals an incident which very
There is probably only one time that really
nearly earned him a red card.
sent panic numbness up my spine. The next morning I picked up the
previous days film from the lab and that’s
This was back in the dark old days of when the sharp hair raising pain shot up
film, in this case 120 roll film my spine. All the images were blue. Not
transparencies. My just pale blue but ‘Fuji grab-you-by-the-
preference was balls-blue’. I had loaded the wrong film!
always for Fuji’s
variants Velvia / Fuji, in their wisdom, colour coded their
RDP / RTP. films as follows: Velvia was in a green
and blue box in a silver wrapper; RTP in
I was a green and blue box in a silver wrapper
photographing and RDP strangely was the same . . .
the Manager of I had loaded Fuji Tungsten RTP which
Ipswich Town although was one of my favourite films it
Football Club. He certainly wasn’t that day.
was picking up a
new shiny Volvo The client at the time was an old school
and I was London-type creative director. Braces,
shooting him on beard, the works. Telling him that I had
the pitch on a wet messed up wasn’t going to be fun!
day. The Although I had shot successfully many
groundsman times, for this client the phrase ‘You’re
wasn’t happy at only as good as your last job’ rang true.
me for parking a
couple of tons of It took some convincing but with a little
Scandinavian repro magic I managed to convince the
metal on his award client it would look good as a blue toned,
winning pitch. black and white print and he would save
money. The ad and billboard went ahead,
I needed to shoot quickly as I only had I even got another job from the same
little more than five minutes. client a little later but had to endure the
Mickey taking for several years after!
With a wet, grumpy manager and a
groundsman loitering menacingly, I When Kodak released the D760 we
quickly loaded two backs of film, slotted jumped on the digital bandwagon.
the Polaroid back onto my camera & took We have never looked back.”
a reading. I pulled the film out and
attached the loaded film magazine to the
camera in readiness.
12
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