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Ferry van Eeuwen
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Video A long time ago I used to have, in fact still have, a double-8 Bell and Howell movie camera. The main object was to film our two children and the progress they made from the baby status onwards. Nothing out of the ordinary, shots of the kids being bathed as a baby, first walking exercises, shots of children playing in the garden or during holidays and all that. Recently the now two grown-up children and two grandchildren almost physically forced me to dig out the old Liesegang movie projector and show the old movies again. The quality of the camerawork leaves much to be desired, to put it mildly. Classic mistakes such as using the camera as a fire hose, much too long shots of almost stationary objects, everything taken from one angle only, trembling hands and-so-on. However, everything turned out for the best as people seem to ignore such amateurish movies as long as they know it is a home made movie. We then seem to lower our standards automatically. One chore still is to copy the movies from celluloid to tape, or even better to DVD. It's added to the rather longish list....I am not much of a photographer either. Instead I preferred buy picture postcards as the quality often was dramatically better than my own shots. A lot of photographs with long shots. Much, much later I found out that close-ups are much nicer. Why don't they teach us moviemaking and photographing already in school? It should be part of our basic education. I used to travel a lot and only on a few occasions I took a camera along with me. Sometimes it drove custom officers crazy. Where you come from Sir? Singapore? May we look into your luggage, this way please. Don't you own a camera or did not you buy any camera's over there? They were after all dramatically cheaper over there, except in Japan were the same items even cost a lot more than in my country, Holland. Now I regret that I did not take more pictures during my many travels. But since a few years I am the owner a digital movie camera for the almost sole purpose of registration of the advancements of the two grand children. Same mistakes, fire hosing etc. At some things you are good and others you will never learn it seems.....
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