In one of the several lives I have crammed into this one, I was/am a professional photographer. For a while, when I had time, I was the official photographer for Cambridge University and each year had to take portraits of the “honours” graduates at a ceremony held in the Senate House. The Chancellor of the University is Prince Philip (although he uses the title of Duke of Edinburgh for the chancellorship, he is the Queen of England’s hubby).
After the ceremony, in which a speech is given in Latin with lots of jolly jokes and puns – oh how we all tittered – the group plod upstairs to a big windowed hall where I took photos of them – a group of about 15 peeps usually – all looking forward to a spiffing lunch and not bothered about a hack photographer trying to get their attention.
Prince Pip wears a gown with lots of gold on it, which is a bitch to light, I nearly got beheaded for rearranging his frock once – getting them all to look at the cameras (I used three to be sure I got the shots) and having the critical lighting in the right place as essentially the shots were always ‘contra-jour’ meant I had to get the attention of all the chattering throng for the group shot at the same time. Using studio flash lighting I needed to synch the strobes to the camera – and my gambit was to hold two cameras and have one on a tripod – I called for their attention (which I did not get ) and triggered the tripod camera – which was not connected to the synch cable.
Making a display of clicking the shutter of the Sinar camera – and nothing happening – I said “shit” very loudly – got their immediate attention and a round of laughter from the whole group – then got them with the hand-held Hasselblad which was synched – so I have a happy snap of Dukes and mega-millionaires, the creator of Figaro, a brilliant bookbinder, et-al (the Latin again) – I had their attention after that, took the snaps and they went off for lunch (I did not go as I had to develop the piccys)