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Moronic Convergence of the Week: Creationism and the John Birch Society

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zombie6/03/2009 10:54:49 pm PDT

re: #173 Abu Lahab

Your photo essay link reminds me of an interesting little-known side-note into the history of “zombie”:

I first got interested in taking “candid” photos of people just being themselves during an independent trip to China. This was before the era of digital cameras. I had a regular film camera, and developed a technique of wearing it around my neck like a typical tourist, but nonchalantly resting my forearm across the top of it, and pressing the shutter at interesting seeming moments. The key is that I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder — I just “aimed” by turning my body the right way and hoping I got something good. The results were so excellent that I was hooked.

The reason your photos reminded me was that I took a whole series of shots of a girl soldier in the People Army, doing some outrageous and very effective flirting with some boy soldiers on a beach — they all were about 18 years old, and in uniform. (It was in a militarily sensitive area, so soldiers were guarding the coastline.)

Even though I was hooked on the whole candid photojournalism thing, doing it with film was very expensive, because 80%+ of the photos were wasted — they were pointing in the wrong direction. And unlike with digital, you had to pay to get it developed, just to see that it wasn’t even worth developing!

When digital cameras came out, it changed everything: Photos were suddenly FREE! And a new career was born.