Duck Shit

One of the funniest photo shoot that I ever attended as a journalist would have to have been when I was still a part-time correspondent. A local environment group won an award from the Prime Minister's office and set up a photoshoot for local journalists down at the river.

The award winners set up river conservation programs and also ran classes for school kids on subjects like the kind of critters that live in their waterways (macro-invertebrates to you technical types). They had been sponsored in this by a major local business -I think it was the company running a nearby minesite. Anyways the mining company had been sponsoring the local River-Watch program and had won an award from the Prime Minister's office and we journalists were invited along.

So I rock up to the river bank one afternoon to find them already set up. They had a table on the riverbank with items like microscopes and various specimen containers (ice cube trays and ice cream cartons to us non-scientific types). the two ladies from the riverwatch group had rounded up a couple of handy teenagers (brother and sister) to be in the photo and they had the town's iconic bridge in the background.
The table and its microscope were to be the foreground with one lady from the riverwatch group and a teenager pretending to look at bugs under the microscope. The other lady was at the riverbank alongside the other teenager both armed with scoop nets and the bridge as backdrop.

First photographer up was the guy representing both the other local paper (my rival) and the state-wide paper(both run by the same company). He was armed with, what has to be,one of the biggest cameras I have ever seen. it was so big he held it in two hands and had to hold the flash-umbrella between his chin and shoulder. He was there for ages and must have taken literally HUNDREDS of shots. The kids were getting restless, the two women were tired of holding the same pose for so long and the media lady from the PMs office had steam coming from her ears!

Did I mention that the Prime Minister's office had sent a media person and a photographer to us for the shoot? She was a big lady and rather fierce; he was a suave Italian with gel-slicked hair, expensive leather shoes and immaculate black slacks and a crisp white shirt. And here he is tip-toeing through the mud and duck-shit beside the Blackwood River!!

Meanwhile I had turned up in my jeans and sneakers fresh from my day-job, grabbed my little Digital Camera and ducked around the annoying guy from the other paper as I fired off a quick series of snaps. I then stood back to enjoy the show. The PMs camera-man was whining about how the other guy was stealing all the light (it was late afternoon) and the PMs media lady was breathing steam and threatening to march in there and tear the other photographer out by the collar.

I could only stand back and giggle.