What was your most embarrassing photography moment? Well mine goes far back a number of years to when I first really became interested in photography and started to use 35mm SLR cameras, whilst serving in the Army.
I had finished a short course at Ashford in Kent, and I had just returned to my unit's barracks in Colchester, Essex when I was told the unit PRO wanted me to take photographs of a very well-known celebrity who was visiting the barracks the following day (Saturday) has she was in the locality after opening a new supermarket in Stansted.
Saturday dawned and later on that morning three Fox armoured vehicles (that's a bit of a give a way to who the celebrity was) drove up to Battalion Headquarters and out stepped the celebrity with her manager and other staff.
She was only about 5 foot tall but with a very well defined chest (yes it was Samantha Fox, the famous Sun Page 3 girl). She was signing copies of her latest calendar and a horde of young soldiers posed for their photo with this sex symbol. I was busy taking photos with a Nikon camera (FM2 I think and a Metz flashgun). I loaded the camera with Ilford Pan F 50 asa film.
After all this was done and because I had a key to the unit darkroom I thought right I will get these three rolls of film developed and processed. Big mistake because this was the very first time that I had done this process and yes I made a right pig's ear of it. I had not developed the films long enough and they were as thin as hell. I went out and bought some chemicals to try and increase the depth and tone of the negatives but I ended up taking them to a local photography shop in an attempt to save my bacon.
Needless to say I was not very popular for many weeks after this incident and I attempted to keep a low profile. Since then I have made the odd error namely clicking away taking photographs to discover that I have not even loaded a film into the damn camera (now tell me you have never done that). Then once when I was doing an important shoot one of my camera's locked up on me. I had a spare body and rolls of film so that was a potential disaster averted.
Then of course there have been times when I wish I had done something which I had not such as take and use my Metz flashgun to Normandy with me when taking photos of the Normandy Veterans (using fill-in-flash outdoors). But available light did the trick. Hindsight is a wonderful thing is it not.
A view of the "Shot at Dawn" Plot at the National Memorial Arboretum. The white statue is of a young British WWI soldier who is blindfolded and waiting to be shot at dawn. The wooden stakes represent over 300 young lives that were ended in this way. Perhaps the saddest image from this whole project. The National Memorial Arboretum, Arelwas, Staffordshire, England.
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