The Stupidity of Being Stubborn

I knew exactly that I was going to fail, but I did it anyway, irrationally thinking that for some not well clear reason the law of physics and optics could be defied by the sacred mission of the photographer. Thus, contrary to basic common sense, a few weeks ago I brought a Nikon 35TI loaded with a Ferrania P33 (ISO160) to a jazz manouche concert of the Tchavolo Schmitt trio at the French Embassy in Rome. The outcomes, as it was easy to predict, were just (euphemistically) poor – Initially published on 335mmc.com

Let’s start with a test shot to ascertain if there was some issue with the hardware:

Apart from the highlight burn, if used within their limits the camera and the film worked properly, so I can’t blame them for such a poor picture like this one:

l may try to spare this next photo pretending that the idea was to focus the attention on the double bass and the guitar on the musician’s lap, while letting the players give a sense of movement to the overall composition. Truth is that, like the others, this is just a bad picture.

The concert was an excellent demonstration of the jazz manouche style and full of ‘moments’ worthy of being put on film. Had this one been taken with a proper setup, the intensity of Mr. Schmitt’s focus on his playing would have been nicely captured.

There is an entire roll of wasted pictures, but I am sure that one may grasp the concept without being exposed to the remaining missing shots.

Some might ask: why bother doing something whose epilogue is already written?

The answer is in a joke we used to play at high school. It goes like that: two friends go to the cinema to watch Rocky IV. ‘Let’s bet on the winner!’ the first declares. ‘OK, I’ll take Ivan Drago,’ says the latter. When the movie ends, the winner doesn’t want to take his friend’s money, so he proposes a re-watch and re-bet, asking his friend to go first. Astonishingly, the latter says: ‘I still take Drago!’ When he inevitably loses the bet to his friend, he asks him why did he still chose Drago. And the answer was: ‘he looked stronger this time.’

In other words, I was just stubborn and stupid.

Full stop.