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John Smith – Great Sport | |||
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“Motor Sport” was the title of John Smith’s presentation to the club on Tuesday 24th January. It was a title bold enough to frighten off most of the ladies and perhaps some of the men who had thoughts such as “Not another darned Steam Engine”. Indeed, John acknowledged this predicament himself with an amusing tale about how many interesting pictures you could take of a steam train whilst you were travelling on it. He then let us into his little secret, so long as we promised not to tell anyone else; he used to be a train spotter and apparently travelled as far as London on one occasion in an attempt to collect some really large numbers. He amazed, and amused us all, with his series of descriptions and tales of past events when he and his friend, Ray, travelled the country covering stock car races and endeavoured to sell the resulting pictures to management and to magazine editors. John described the various ruses required to get access to the events and the various ruses used by management and editors to avoid payment for pictures. John interacted with such weighty publications as “Stock Car Racer; New Stock Car; and Stock Car Nostalgia; not to mention those other publications – the Stockport Advertiser, Rochdale Advertiser, and Daily Express. John flashed his official card “Freelance Photographer” at us but too quickly for us to check on the picture it contained. These initial remarks continued ‘til break-time. In truth, Eric Morecombe and Earnie Wise had nothing on a John Smith in full flow. But where were the pictures? After the break John turned the projector on. Old-style film photographers were in their element. Fast monochrome film pushed even faster by development gave that lovely grainy effect. As John explained, there wasn’t much light and a reasonably high shutter speed was required to arrest car movement. For some reason over 50% of the cars shown appeared to be upside down, or else on top of another car. The rules of this game seemed very obscure. Eventually John turned the colour on but the attitude of the drivers had not apparently improved. Not content with smashing their cars some drivers towed their caravans behind, with the inevitable result. At the interval John showed us some of the cameras he had employed. The trusty Zenit was there but only with a 50mm lens. How close to the danger did he have to go with that one? John finished by displaying prints of some of the images. President Richard Scaife declared himself gob-smacked, but well satisfied with the evening. What more can one say? Bill Chadband |
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