Mel was visiting to accompany me on a rural walk on her way back to Nottingham, and she wanted to go to our mediaeval church again. I saw her leaning on the churchyard gate preparing to take a picture, so I advised a different angle in order to place some gravestones and a show of spring flowers (daffodils and crocuses) in the foreground. I explained that this would add interest and depth to the picture. She pushed the phone towards me.
‘You’re the professional; you do it,’ she instructed.
‘I wouldn’t know how to,’ I objected.
‘You point the phone and press the button.’
‘Which button?’
‘That one.’
The big one in the middle?’
‘Yes.’
And so I did. And because I’ve never even held a smart phone before, let alone operated one, I accidentally touched the screen a couple of times so she ended up with three versions of more or less the same picture (but they were all good, the day being sunny and the composition classic.)
So, for the first time in my life I took a picture without a camera. I’m more used to mounting a Mamiya 6x6 TLR on a tripod, wandering around for a while to examine different angles, spending even more time assessing the balance of light and shade, taking meter readings etc. Pointing a piece of plastic seemed verging on the disrespectful, but finding something new to do at my time of life was actually quite refreshing. I suppose I should have asked her to send me a copy of the picture so I could post it here, but I was so blown away by the oddness of it all that I was too dizzy to think about it.
(I pressed the button with my thumb, by the way. Does that count as poking?)
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