That Christian Bale Rant

I'm sure you've all heard about it. That poor Director of Photography moved on the set whilst the actor was rehearsinging the scene. Bale unleashed a tirade of f-words and kept going on and on and on. He was upset. It made me feel quite uneasy listening to it as I've just finished working on a film set as a stills photographer. When does a stills photographer get her picutres? Not during a take. So you have to hit the shutter button during rehearsals. But it does get noticed. Whilst everyone else on the set freezes in their actions - I'm sure that some will even hold their breaths - the stills photographer is still plowing away. I suppose on zillion-dollar budget features, they manage to encase their cameras in blimps so that the shutter noise does not reach anyone's ears. But on low budget ones ... Luckily, we had some great British actors on the set: Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Celia Imre.

As it happens, I was once evicted from a set ... well, kind of. I was visiting Luxor in Egypt and our guide, a former extra on "Death on the Nile" or "Jewel on the Nile" was showing our little troupe around the ruins of Karnak. Everyone had (silent) digicams apart from me. This resulted in my 1Ds' shutter swinging back and forth with the greatest of joy until I was challenged by him: "Young lady", he looked straight into my eyes with a piercing stare, "do you want to follow my talk or do you want to take pictures elsewhere?" I have to admit that his question did catch me a little unaware and I hesitated a few seconds before giving the correct answer - I'm a photographer after all - "take pictures elsewhere". Later all the digicam users told me that they had been clicking behind his back and were quite scared of him and would have liked to have joined me. :-)

Chinese New Year in London

The Chinese New Year's celebrations in London always used to be my favourite event of the year and right now I'm not so sure anymore if it still is. I loved the parade and I'm quite sure so did the other togs - but this year they didn't have one. Sob, blubber.

I grew up with stories about a distant cousin of mine emigrating to Hong Kong - well, he eventually became the Ferrari retailer to the wealthy Chinese, and is probably counting his money right now. Having visited Hong Kong a few years ago, I must say that I liked the town and the Chinese a lot - apart from a metallic smell of the seafood/shellfish odour lingering in the air - but that's another story. The view from Hong Kong peak at night is just unbelievable and right now I want to go back!!!

Today, London celebrated the "Year of the Ox" which comes around every twelve years. Oviously, I'm not going to tell you under with sign of the Chinese zodiac I was born because this might lead you to some unlawful - yeah, don't do it - calculations of my age. ;) But, so you can relax, mine is a really lovely sign.

Photographers don't like politicians and their stand-ins on stage adressing the public. Does anyone ever listen? Is it photogenic. I don't know. But then, thinking back, some of my past politicians' pictures have sold.

Due to being the stills photographer on a "low budget" feature film - don't worry, some blogs about this will follow - I couldn't really stay long. I ended up in a press pen outside the press pen (don't ask) to watch a "flying lion". Yup. Something like that performed by the brothers Chen. They were up on some - what looked-like tubes - and jumped from one to the other. Pretty scary. They really did well, until, shock, horror, one of the tubes fell. Ahhh. I'm pretty sure that everyone went: NOOOOOOHHH! But we needn't have worried. It was part of the act and just made watching even more enjoyable.

It still is my favourite festival - I do tell everyone taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival the same but let's keep that a secret!