A couple of days ago I was taking pictures with my very reliable Shin Hao 4x5 camera and my super wide 65 super Angulon lens. A friend of mine was complaining that he could not swing and tilt his super wide angle lens on his camera to achieve control of
Perspective and Parallel Lines . We were working in a village and he asked for my help. I thought about it and thought, my techniques are not what they used to be only because Photoshop makes it easy to correct parallax and distortion. But back in the old days there was no photoshop. You had to do this in the camera. Large format cameras do that and some specialty 35 mm lenses do too. The really nice part about using the large camera, there are many, is that you can see how your picture changes just by swinging and tilting the cameras lens plane and the film plane. So I took the camera out to the market that is right outside my door to practice some shooting. Setting up the camera takes time and people gathered around to see what I was doing. When I put the hood over my head to see the image a collective ahhhhhhh came from the crowd. In my best Chinese I asked several people if they wanted a view. Education is the quickest way to
extinguish fear and mistrust. I always let people participate in my process when I can. My feeling is the more people are interested the easier my work is. Yet, not everyone has an interest in the work and will do their best to discredit me make fun of me. I don't know I think it is more of a personal issue than having to do with me. Anyway, a woman stepped up to the camera and called me a stupid white devil ( a real derogitory and mean spirited way to refer to foreigners) laughing, thinking what a stupid foreigner taking pictures with a ridiculous contraption doesn't even know what I am saying. Then I answered her in chinese. Stupid? White Devil? What? Why say that. Yes, I am a foreigner... Her eyes bugged out, her face turned red the crowd got quiet and she left.... very quickly.... Yes the white devil speaks chinese! Not so stupid afterall!
