IMAGES ARE NOT EVERYWHERE!

BY FRANK ROONEY

The first time I heard the words, “Images are everywhere”, I was uplifted, excited by the whole new world of photographic opportunities this promised. But the euphoria lasted only the length of time it took me to suss onto what the images are everywhere crew classed as a legit’ photo’, (about 10 long bored witless minutes). Whenever I hear this mantra now my heart sinks. Because I know I’m in for a couple of hours of looking at pictures of the slight variations in the grain of sandstone, or abstract slides of shadows of curtains on wallpaper or pictorial themes on the colour red. Each image as inane as the last and all having me begging our maker for a swift merciful death. No doubt these people have their counterparts in the Arctic Circle, showing the indigenous population two hour slide shows of white. Before Photoshop I think it’s true to say that the Eskimo had fifty words for snow and none for “get a life, you saddo”. I bet they do now though!

Of course, Photoshop is to blame for ascendancy of the pictures of nothing brigade. All kinds of people have embraced the technology. (I remember getting involved in a heated debate about what constitutes a valid image with a lady of very advanced years. The argument was settled only when it was discovered that although she could run rings around me on CS2, she was no match for me at kick boxing.) These people believe that the eighteen hours they have spent on the p.c. realising the visual essence of kelp and the like lends credibility to the image. It doesn’t! It just serves to prove how disillusioned they are.

Imaging software has robbed the world of some first class models of Canterbury Cathedral! That’s how their time would otherwise be employed, spending hour after pointless hour gluing matchsticks together. They were harmless back then. They didn’t travel the country forcing amateur photographers to politely fight off narcolepsy on club nights.

I know how it really is… The relationship between photographer and image is more akin to that of Ahab and the great whale Moby Dick. It’s out there, rarely glimpsed; elusive and magnificent it calls to us, defies us to capture it. But the truth is, it is that which captures us! All those near misses we suffer, all those close encounters with greatness and immortality are just more barbs in the photographers flesh. Every failed attempt at perfection condemns us to further humiliations because sick to the pit of our stomachs like jilted lovers we vow… “Next time my friend. Catch you next time”. We fail to see that, like Ahab in his pursuit of the leviathan, we have become the captured one. Injured pride is just a leash around our necks dragging us to the next encounter and the next after that. Our own tenacity and vanity are harpoons in the flesh.

Images are not everywhere; they are elusive and fleeting and have to be hunted down. But sometimes, very rarely, they come to us…

I love Spain. I take a short city break there with a group of friends once a year, (more often if we can fit it in). March of this year found me sharing a room in a small hotel in the medieval quarter of Seville with a new amigo. Tony Myers proved to be an ideal room-mate. He didn’t spread his kit over my side of the room, almost always flushed the toilet after himself and best of all, he didn’t snore one little bit! In fact he made no attention seeking noises from any orifice which for me, counts for a lot in a room-mate. It did puzzle me though why he chose to pack his Brokeback Mountain undies. (Personally, I packed only new underwear for the trip. New to me that is.)

But it wasn’t that which kept me awake through the early hours, tossing and turning in our little hotel room. I’m always the same when I go away. The first night in a new bed never sees me drop off before the dawn and it was no different that night. I lay beneath the open window listening for night sounds from the labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets below. By three a.m. even the last of the drunks were abed. But then out of the silence, the street cleaners arrived. Not the brush and wheelbarrow boys that we have in England. These lads get out after midnight and use a hose to spray the day’s dirt into the gutters. I’d photographed them just a couple of hours earlier hosing down the Catederal Plaza (pic 1). I couldn’t believe my luck… a great photo’ op’ had come to knock me out of bed!

Outside of the room window was a balcony of sorts. It was extremely narrow, more a façade of a balcony, there to ensure that the exterior of the building met with the strict planning laws which dictated that the antiquated character of buildings in the historic quarter be maintained. As it was just for show there was no proper access from the room. But the window which started from about four and a half foot above the floor tempted the very agile and the very stupid to try their luck.

For some years now I have been suffering from cake-retention. My daughter has just reached that age (twelve) were children become anxious about their parent’s mortality and get sanctimonious about their lifestyle choices. She has been urging me to ask my G.P. to prescribe appetite suppressants. I have explained to her that curry chips followed by a Mars Bar suppresses my appetite perfectly well until meal-time. Also, although the charm and patience of doctor’s receptionists are legendary, I’d sooner deal with the people who staff chippies for my suppressants any day!

Despite my body mass, I leapt gazelle-like through the open window. Unfortunately the gazelle that I was like must have had little stubby legs and a big fat belly because I made a right hash of it!

(I don’t remember grabbing the curtains. Things happen so fast in these life and death situations. But when I woke up in the morning they were hanging all limp and sorry for themselves. About half a dozen big wooden curtain rings were scattered about the floor which the hotel porter had to replace. I am not proud of this!)

Once on the balcony I found that almost all of the floor space was taken up by an air-conditioning unit. The only position which allowed me to be upright enough to aim my camera was to straddle the unit like a bare back rider with one leg wedged between the unit and the exterior of the room wall and the other squeezed between the unit and the balcony’s wrought iron railings. As the balcony was not intended for human occupation, the railings were there for aesthetic rather than practical considerations. As they did not even rise as far as hip height there was a real and present danger that I could topple head first to the cobbles below. Even if I didn’t tip, with the combined weight of me and the air-conditioning, there must have been a good chance of the whole thing just crashing to the street below. But these thoughts didn’t bother me, didn’t even occur to me. That’s not to say though that I wasn’t worried…

It had been a long day, airports, crying kids, taxis, waiting around etc. It was past three a.m. and I was mentally exhausted. The very real danger I’d exposed myself to of face to pavement trauma barely registered with me. But what did give me cause for concern, what worried me greatly throughout my time on the balcony, was that I may contact Legionnaires Disease by air-con unit to bottom transmission!

(Illness has left me with a diminished immune system. This has rendered me a bit paranoid where infection is concerned. Although I am as negligently ignorant as ever to casualty of flesh and bone, those invisible: insidious, infectious little enemies have given me more sleepless nights than they should have.)

At first I tried hovering with my bum a couple of inches above the air-con’ but the strain on my calf and thigh muscles was intense. And anyway, my legs shook too much for the camera, so I gave in and sat on the thing letting my legs take what weight they could.

My acrobatics had gone unnoticed by the men below so I commenced to furtively photograph them as they hosed down the street (pic 2). (Well I was as furtive as a man can be at three in the morning who is perched fifteen foot in the air: milk bottle white, weighing sixteen and a half stone who is wearing nothing but a leopard-skin thong!)

It started as a rerun of what I’d captured earlier outside the cathedral. But as I clicked away the hose they used became disengaged from the water main and a fountain of water spurted two stories into the air (pic 3). They looked up and down the street to check that no one had seen what had happened. I held my breath and froze. Luckily they remained blissfully unaware of my presence above. I don’t know from experience but my guess is that it’s probably best not to startle the crap out of a couple of hombres who have the ability to hose you into the next life. Satisfied that their embarrassment had gone unnoticed, they covered themselves head to toe in bright orange waterproofs (pic 4), and held a case conference on who was to play what role in resolving the problem (pic 5).

I snapped away, the lone silent witness to their aqua-dramatics. Then came the decisive moment! One of the men knelt to fight down the water and contain the jet with a bucket-like vessel. For a second or two (no more than that), he was perfectly aligned for THE SHOT! He knelt with his back to me, poised for action, a coiled spring; beautifully silhouetted against an impromptu fountain in our timeless little chunk of Andalusia.

I missed it. I got the shot seconds later, after the jet had been capped: a dead shot. A shot devoid of all the tension and anticipation of action about to happen and of the delight of contrast between man, fountain and street. An after the event shot. A nothing shot (pic 6)

The decisive moment wasn’t missed because I was weary of over reaching and tipping head first off the balcony. It wasn’t missed because I had an air-conditioning unit clenched between the cheeks of my arse. I missed it because I was all fingers and thumbs fiddling with ISO settings and aperture priorities and other stuff I hadn’t done enough homework on.

Ted Baker would have got the shot. Tony Myers asleep just a few feet away the other side of the wall from me would have got the shot. And how does that make me feel?

Sick to the stomach like a jilted lover… Next time, my friend. Catch you next time…

Please send any comments to Frank