Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ted, Thanks for your reassuring words. I'm slowly getting better from the flu and I trust that you are well on the road to recovery from your eye operation. It's tough being an old fart, isn't it. About picture taking. I know my skills as a photographer. Patience isn't one of them. My few years as a news photographer trained me to snap a shot as soon as an appropriate scene presented itself. Any reasonable picture would do as long as it could make the early edition. A follow up piece on the Planet Earth nature series mentioned that a photo crew stalked a snow leopard for three years to get 30 seconds of screen time. Let's see. A photographer and two assistants probably would cost about $150,000 per year, perhaps more. Add in supplies, equipment, transport and overhead and the three year cost would probably be between $750,000 and a cool million. So it comes to about $30,000 per second of TV time. And that doesn't add in the really expensive costs of editing and production. It sure makes owning a digital Leica one of the best bargains in photography. My wife, a well respected painter, constantly tells me that fine art isn't spontaneous. You must form an image in your mind and carefully work to realize it in actuality. The lesson is usually lost on me. If it looks good in the viewfinder, I simply push the button. Best regards, Larry Z