Posts Tagged ‘photography’

Typical photo shoot set up in confined area

I spent much of today getting my camera equipment ready for a photo shoot coming up soon for a good friend, Keith Rocco, a fine historical artist.  This means making certain cameras are clean, loaded, and with charged batteries.  It also involves cleaning and checking out lenses, exposure meters, lights, backdrop stands, and various other photographic paraphernalia.

This may sound strange, but doing so invariably reminds me of the cleaning and checking out process with weapons and the equipment needed for a military operation or a law enforcement raid of some kind.  In my past I’ve done both.

I find guns and cameras a captivating contrast, with interesting similarities.  When I was in the military, and later in law enforcement, checking your weapons and equipment was essential to survival. They had to be checked and checked again to be certain, if needed, they would be available and properly functioning.  If you had to use a gun, however, the outcome was hardly creative.  The results were more distructive.

In photography, your equipment still has to be available and functioning, but the end result is quite different.  Rather than possibly destroying something or hurting someone, you are creating images people might enjoy or use productively.

It is the professional tasks of cleaning and functionally checking the tools of your trade where I find interesting contrasts and similitudes.  In the long run, I find what I am doing now in photography a more personally satisfying end result – - – but, then, in the past, I wouldn’t have wanted to run into a bad guy in a dark alley when all I had was a camera

Will Hutchison

I have so much to talk about right now. In the last several months I’ve published two books, my first non-fiction history and photography book, ‘Crimean Memories: Artefacts of the Crimean War,’ and the sequel to my first historical fiction novel. My first novel was ‘Follow Me to Glory,’ about a young Scottish nobleman coming of age as a man and an officer in the Crimean War. The sequel, ‘The Gettysburg Conspiracy,’ takes this same officer, Ian Carlyle, into the American Civil War as a British observer, who then becomes involved against his will in a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. I won’t bore you with details, but if you want to know more I invite you to visit my web site at www.willhutchison.com.

The book launch for The Gettysburg Conspiracy was on the evening of 20 November 2009, at the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg. It was part of Americas’ Arts “Hear, See, Now Event,” and was called “Cocktails, Conversation, and Conspiracy.” It was sold out, and I believe the folks attending had a grand time – I know I did.

Crimean Memories

Follow Me to Glory - 1st in the Ian Carlyle Series

The Gettysburg Conspiracy - 2nd in the Ian Carlyle Series