Bird paparazzi

There is a certain species of photographer, Jerold is one, who enjoys scaring animals in order to snap them in action. A kind of paparazzi?

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Jerold: Hold it there, birds, don’t take off until I get right onto the jetty.

Footsteps.

Jerold: That’s it. Now! Fly, fly.

6 exposures per second for 7 seconds.

Jerold: Must have a winner among that lot.

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Great shot

Case calls from the computer room: “Come here.”

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House: What is it? I’m watching ER.

Case: You’ll like it.

House: Who says I’ll like it? (nevertheless getting up from TV)

Case: Isn’t he cute? What do you think?

House: Hmph. My prognosis? If he doesn’t become vegetarian, he could get a parasite from all the fish fingers he’s being fed.

Case: Great snap don’t you think?

House: Admittedly a great shot. But at the risk of sounding curmedgeonly, I’d suggest if he’d been shot on 4 megapixels instead of 26 KB, he'd have stood up sharply at attention and his whiskers would been included, and this would have been a truly great shot. Timing is all, yes, or as Cartier-Bresson would have it, the decisive moment. Devil is in the details. Still, a great shot.

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Don't shoot

The snowman screams, silently.

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Snowman: I'm not giving you permission.

Sato: Why?

Snowman: You know if you take my picture you take away part of me.

Sato: Your soul?

Snowman: You shoot that flash and see what the heat does.

Sato: It's all in your mind.

Snowman: Come back tomorrow. I won't be here.

Sato: That's why I take your picture. Something to remember you by.
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You blinked

Han of Hong Kong is traveling with his parents, Li and Law.

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Han: Mom, you blinked. We’ll take it again.

Ms Li: I always flinch when the flash goes off.

Mr Law: You blink before the flash goes off.

Han: Anyway, focus on your eyes. Keep them wide open, like a gwailo.

Ms Li: No way, I'm Chinese.

Han: I’m serious. The big-name movie actors have this charisma because they blink less often than ordinary people. They train themselves not to blink. Chinese or not, makes no difference.

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Photographing food every day

Louise asks Luigi why he always photographs food when he eats. Scene 44 of Smoke Rehashed.

Luigi: You mean before or after?

Louise: It’s even weirder that you photograph the remains.

Luigi: People use cameras in many different ways. I’ve known several people who have taken a picture at the same time, same place, every day.

Louise: Who?

Luigi: Auggie Wren.

Louise: Do I know him?

Luigi: You may have forgotten him. Character played by Harvey Keitel in Smoke.

Louise: For God’s sake. A character in a movie?

Luigi: OK, Trev next door did the same thing. Photographed the estuary same angle every day at different times when the light was different.

Louise: But recording all the stuff you ever ate?

Luigi: Only at dinner.

Susan Sontag interviews herself

Why do you take photos?

I travel, so I like to recall where I’ve been. And people I’ve met.

So you are a tourist in other people’s realities?

Eventually the camera makes me a tourist in my own reality.

Could it also be that your traveling becomes a reason for taking photos?

Perhaps. But to take a photograph is to confer importance on an otherwise unnoticed event.

But don’t you think, with some photos, when you record the past, you are also inventing it?

You mean, because photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal?

So the camera lies?

Not only that, it also helps people take possession of space in which they are insecure.

Will you write a book about photography?

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

Will you try taking photographs of your thoughts?

If I do, the images will be surreal.
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