"Flemish Painter Weekend"

[acroyear]

This is the third labor day weekend in a row that I can recall where *everybody* had a damn camera, usually really big ones with huge lenses and all that flash-control crap on it.  Some of them even used real film (oooooohhhh....)!

Is this some kind of club?  Is there a place online where all of these pictures end up?

Comments

[analise.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the people with the big cameras but I've made a big post here (http://analise.livejournal.com/390537.html) with a sampling of the pictures I took this past weekend. (I took something like 600 pictures and didn't feel up to uploading allll of them.)

[pyllgrum.livejournal.com]

It sure seemed to be an Annoying Portraitist Union meeting. I wasn't aware till yesterday that carrying a camera gave you permission to stand up and block everyone else's view, walk to the edge of the stage and stand until you got the portrait you desire, or push your way through the crowd at the Gate show to get a picture of your daughter with the King on his horse in the background.

Emergency crews should carry cameras rather than sirens and lights, they will be able to get through crowds easier.

Of course, none of these behaviors was displayed by the enchanting and polite Analise.

[analise.livejournal.com]

I was about to get worried there. I tried to be unobtrusive in my photo-taking. :)

[an-idle-fellow.livejournal.com]

I wondered the same thing myself and so did a bit of searching and part of the answer seems to be that a group of DC Photo Yahoos (I wonder if that's the right choice of phrase -- still, seems to be the one suggested by the group's name & location) had an outing there on Sunday. Photos are here (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dcphotogs/links/Member_s_Links_001026650756). Look at "Harmonious Raspberry", "Inigo Montoya" and "Joo". As one might expect from the length of the lenses -- absurdly long, I think -- there are a lot of tight closeups, but tight closeups can be nice and many of the shots are.

I was there as well and with multiple cameras -- photos here (including a couple of your wife from a few years back (http://flickr.com/photos/wastrel) -- and so was raising the averages. But I was also there last weekend and will be there next weekend and the weekend after that &c., so am part of the secular, not cyclical, trend. I'd like to think of myself, while I'm there, more as part of the renaissance crowd than the photo crowd, but I do love to take pictures & won't be separated from my cameras.

As for the photo-rudeness. I try to be discreetish and unobtrusiveish, but sometimes the "ish" part wins out. I often stand next to the post at the front of the center aisle at the White Hart thinking that there is less in the way than elsewhere near the stage, but it's been many years since I've been as slim as that post, so I'm pretty much kidding myself there. To be fair, though, it's not so much the camera as my adoration for Molly Stubbs that puts me there.

Still, If you see me in the way feel free to pull me aside and make a suggestion like "Move you idiot" or some such. Since one of the photo club got a shot of me and my film camera with a respectably short lens (http://www.pbase.com/inigmntoya/image/85008658) I can be recognized.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, i didn't see (myself) exceptional rudeness though skivee noted some were trying a little "too hard" to create that spontaneity (ok, you over here, now you here, now tilt your head just a little higher, little more, little more, now you move just a touch more to the right...).

but it wasn't just sunday - a group was out in force saturday as well.

normally it's not a problem except their inevitable distressed look when they realize that while performing i just do NOT hold still. not for anybody. either dancing or tambourine, my movement is my schtick, my means of connecting - i'm always heading somewhere. so the most they can ever hope for is that i (and i will after a bit) get out of the way so at least they can get a clean shot at instantly-photogenic faireraven.