Monday. Start the week

Reflections

Photography being the quirky thing it is, all professionals have stories. A photographer I shall call Dave told me this one.

He was once commissioned by an international arts magazine to photograph a collection of figurines in the Arts Museum of a European city which I think should also remain anonymous. It was to be done on a day when the museum was closed to the public.

He arrived, and was shown to the room by the curator. The figurines, some six inches high, were stunningly beautiful, arranged neatly under a large glass dome-like cover. He saw immediately how he would photograph them. Flash, reflected off a white sheet. A nice, soft light.

He thanked the curator and asked him, ‘-The cover - shall I lift it off - or would you rather do that yourself?’

The curator gaped at him. ‘The cover? Oh, no! The cover must not be removed on any account. The cover must remain at all times.’

He turned and left.

It was just one of those things that the professional has to put up with. But it was a big problem. The cover was reflecting the windows and the figurines were partly obscured. Also, any gear he used in front of the glass would be reflected. And, naturally, flash, even indirect reflected flash, was out of the question.

But, somehow, he must make a roll of pictures.

There was a way.

He went out and bought a huge roll of black paper and some strong adhesive tape. He borrowed a ladder from the curator - having explained how he was solving the problem - switched on the lights and, four hours later, all windows were blacked out so that not a hint of window was visible in the glass. The figurines were laid bare. He switched off the lights. There was just enough daylight for photography filtering down from three small skylights.

Shooting would take half an hour. He'd get the paper down, set off to the airport and hope for a flight home.

He was getting out his gear when the door opened and a small man in overalls came in, carrying a workbox. He placed this on the floor next to the glass dome. Then, with Dave staring at him, unbelieving, he embraced the dome, lifted it off, placed it gently on the floor, took a feather duster from his workbox and began dusting the figurines. He looked up and gave Dave a crooked smile.

That’s professional photography for you.

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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010

Blue Blurs

High-qualty luggage with yellow-and-black gaffer tape wrapped round it says absolutely nothing about your tastes in luggage design.

But it’s jolly handy. Take the farrago in Reykjavik.

The photographer and I had just landed at Reykjavik and seen our luggage wheeled out to where several buses were standing. The person at the desk told us to join the queue beside the bus being loaded. We hoisted two each of the photographer’s cases of paraphernalia (he never let these out of his sight), went out and stood in the queue for the bright blue bus.

The loading of luggage was almost completed. The job done, the horizontal door was slammed shut and a man by the passengers’ gangway holding his clipboard began ticking off each passenger as they boarded.

When it was our turn he walked away to attend to other matters. We wondered about this but waited patiently.

Then the engine started, the door slammed, the bus moved off and we stood gazing after it.

I shot back to the desk person. ‘Our bus,’ I said. ‘It’s gone with our luggage’.

She looked over my shoulder, smiled and shook her head.

‘No, sir! You have not missed it. It is due to leave in a few minutes.’ She pointed. ‘There it is.’ And there stood a red bus, now revealed by the departure of the blue one and being loaded.

‘But - the blue one?’

‘The blue one? Oh, that is an American group on a ten-day tour round Iceland.’

Relative to Australia, Iceland is small. But when you see three weeks’ baggage vanishing into its distances it becomes vast.

At this point memory fails me. Some sort of investigation occurred, I think. The next I remember is that we were in a taxi, telling the driver to follow the route of the blue bus. He seemed delighted to obey and we shot off, eyes skinned for anything blue.

Blue is a popular colour in Iceland. Many houses have doors and woodwork picked out in blue. Its small fishing vessels pulled up along its beaches are often bright blue. I was sweating hard and sitting on the edge of my seat, gripping the back of the seat in front. Blue blurs were flashing past our windows.

We had been bounding along for some ten minutes when the image of school buildings and a splash of blue paintwork went streaking by.

‘Stop!’ I shrieked.

It was an irrational decision. For one patch of blue among the dozens already passed we could be making the search more difficult than before. He stood on the brake, stopped and reversed for a few yards and there, being unloaded in the yard, was the rear end of a blue bus. Luggage was being taken into the building. We ran through the gates and into the building and started burrowing in the pile of exceedingly heavy and colourful baggage. I had no idea that baggage could be quite so heavy and colourful.

Then ours, with its startling bands of broad yellow-and-black gaffer tape plastered all over it, shone out from all the rest. We gave hoots of delight and began dragging it all out.

We became aware of an elderly American couple, standing quite still and looking at us. We gave them a smile. They smiled back and told us to have a nice day.

Which, by then, is exactly what it was.

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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010

R F Dagnall and Inflatable Dinghies

‘Now, watch out. That casing’s going to blow apart. OK?’  I stood clear. The youngish shirtsleeved man was holding a length of cord attached to a white, barrel-sized cylinder. He gave it a sharp tug.

There followed the sound like that of an enormous beast breaking wind, and the cylinder flew apart. From inside there appeared a swiftly-growing vertical black pillar supporting a bright red tent. This was surrounded by a black ring of inflating black rubberised canvas.

It was an inflatable liferaft for ships and aircraft and it was my first day at a new job with the RFD Company in Godalming, Surrey.

Moving to a new job was old hat. By the time I was 30 I had moved to six, so I was experienced. Each of them had been either the learn-it-in-a-day sort or requiring knowledge which, to some extent, I already possessed.

But moving to this one was different: I knew absolutely nothing about the subject. It was an entirely new field. And I had to write about it.

I had accepted the job because I was becoming bored with the current one. Although it was thirty miles away from home and meant moving house it required the writing of technical stuff about the design and maintenance of lifesaving equipment. Liferafts, lifejackets. Things that saved you from drowning. And this, I felt, would be good. I would start learning from day one and work hard at learning the lot. I was enthused. I might even have rubbed my hands.

My girlfriend and I had just married. We moved to Guildford. Much nicer than Hendon, we found. A detached house, just completed and situated at the end of a close. This, we knew, was going to be good.

I learned all that I needed to learn about the operation and plunged into the writing of maintenance manuals and booklets. Technical authors who are newcomers to a subject usually do a good job because they instinctively write from the new user’s angle. I gathered I was conforming to type and giving satisfaction. I engaged a secretary. Very efficient, she was.

And then I discovered something else.

The representative for one of the design agencies I used was keen and anxious to please. One morning we had just completed a briefing when he invited me to have lunch with him at a small restaurant in the village.

Now, this will sound ludicrous: in fifteen years of working life I had never been invited to a business lunch. This might of course have been due to bad breath or some unpleasant habit of which I was unaware. But here I was, here he was, and off we went.

It was pleasant in the little, low-lit room. Quiet and inoffensive music, a scattering of customers, brisk waiters, crisp linen. My host asked which wine I would like, red or white. I did not know. I had tasted wine now and then when pressed by those older and wiser than I, but that is all. Tentative halves of cider on holiday had been my limit. I chose red and wondered how it would taste.

I liked it.

Conversation grew more relaxed. Surroundings became evanescent. The pudding was delicious but I couldn’t remember choosing it. We ended the meal and, on the way out, I had the impression that I was not having to put any effort into either propulsion or steering. Tables simply moved apart as I approached, the carpet slid backwards at every step, the doorway to the street widened as the tide upon which I floated carried me through it. I had discovered what it is to be slightly, pleasantly, drunk.

The work continued but a few years on I found I was becoming stale. And it was probably noticeable. Something was wrong. I was using one of the knacks I had developed, the ability to write fairly clear prose. But little else. And wasn't there something better for me to do? I knew my work was suffering. I needed a new scene.

I asked for an assistant, someone who would be able to move into my chair and do the job as well as, and preferably better than, I had managed. I selected a delightful chap with a fine moustache who, comically, turned out to have been an RAF Wing Commander. From nine ranks below and for the next few months I introduced him to the products and their individual requirements, watched him carry it all with ease, and resigned.

I told a knowledgeable acquaintance in London I was available for anything that he happened to hear of.

One Saturday morning he rang.

‘I think I’ve found exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for.’

‘Wonderful! Not too far away, I hope?’

‘Well -’

‘Ah, I see. Miles away up North, I suppose?’

‘Oh no. Nothing like that.’ He left a nicely-judged pause.

‘India.’

And if you've forgotten what happened then, scroll back to March 8th, 'New Arrivals'.

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NOTE: I’m grateful to our very good family friend from Guildford days, Roger Lake, for sending me a Surrey Advertiser cutting announcing an exhibition to be held next year in Godalming Museum, presenting the story of R F Dagnall and the history of the RFD Company. It seeks contributions from all who once worked at RFD. It was this cutting that prompted me to write about my own few years with the company.

For those who won’t be able to manage Godalming, here is the gist of a cutting from the magazine Flight for November 1942. It is their obituary for Reginald Foster Dagnall. He was born in London in 1888. He developed a fascination for the design and construction of small airships. In 1920 he formed his own company, RFD Ltd, Godalming, in the design and manufacture of pneumatic dinghies and barrage balloons. He died on November 16, 1942. The company later amalgamated with the Beaufort Company and is now RFD Beaufort.