Back in 1993, in between newspaper gigs, I took on an interesting job.
It involved making a fool of myself, babbling and holding up stuffed animals while trying to make babies smile.
No, I wasn’t a children’s entertainer. I was a portrait photographer.
I was hired by a company out of Toronto to travel around Vancouver Island and the south-west end of the B.C. Interior to take photos in smaller communities such as Port Hardy, Powell River, Squamish and Mission.
Every week, I’d load up my beat-up car with my equipment, head north from my base in Victoria, or cross the strait by ferry to the Mainland, set up a temporary studio in a store and attempt to make people, mostly children, smile.
I had backdrops – vinyl curtains used as the background of the photos – with serene sky blue, the dramatic black, the treed green landscape, the baby nursery room, and that hideous blue and pink laser catastrophe that some of you may remember from your school portrait photos, when you had the mullet and/or Farah Fawcett waves and the bad acne.
I should mention, these were the days before digital cameras did everything for you. Back then, a photographer used film and photos were printed – on paper.
Some of you may remember that light sensitive cellulose acetate strip that came in a cannister, which you had to load manually into your camera, praying that the little tab at the end of the film would be placed properly on the spool so the film would advance.
In my case, the film in my camera measured 70-millimetres (the same size that was used in movies back then). I had to remove the beast (the size of a roll of toilet paper) from its cannister in a dark bag, then attempt to load it blindly into this giant fixed lens camera – likely the same model Charlie Chaplin used when he was shooting his silent black and white movies.
With the camera on a tripod and a strobe light bounced off of an umbrella for softer light, I would then have to take a “dummy string,” actually a shutter release cable, and hold it from the camera to the tip of my subject’s nose to make sure he/she was focussed.
Then it was click, coo, click, click, click, adjust baby to sitting position, click, click, click.
By this point, Junior would be looking up close and personal at this stranger in front of him and would start with a whimper and then a full-out wail.
That’s where the clowning came in.
A portrait photographer’s best arsenal is not a camera, but how goofy and ridiculous they can act – with a puppet or stuffed animal in hand. If you had to stand on your head, you did.
As there was no way to screen the shots instantly, I would have to send the film off to the developer, and then return to the clients three weeks later with their prints.
This was a dreaded time when sometimes angry and tightwad parents would be mortified at their little Johnny’s appearance and that they would have to shell out $10 for the “special” photo package.
But then, I would have clients who would pay $80 for the whole package of 50-or so photos, with their kid picking his/her nose... To say the least, it was an interesting study in human behaviour.
So kids, when you get back to school next week and have to sit for your annual portrait, remember, always smile for the camera.