A few days ago, I was watching a commercial photographer do his thing before the start of a company’s annual meeting. The photographer was shooting a group picture of the chairman, the CEO, the president and the entire board of directors.
The photographer had one camera, one lens, one tripod, one flash, one light stand, one sync cord and one power cord for the flash. Since the group photo was to take only a few minutes, why bring backup equipment? What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s see:
• His power cord failed. The cord was frayed and worked intermittently. It didn’t help that the cord was left loose to zig-zag across the hotel conference room floor where everyone was stepping on it. Hotel staff had to run and find another cord.
• His lens failed. Something apparently went wrong with the focusing. He borrowed a lens from me since I use the same brand of equipment.
• His sync cord malfunctioned. So with one hand, the photographer fired his camera (on a tripod) using a slow shutter speed and then, with his other hand, quickly reached over to manually pop the flash during the exposure.
His two-handed performance was certainly entertaining to watch.
