Chapter 12: Crikey!

“WE ARE GOING to focus on processing and printing today and tomorrow,” Josh said when we got to our class in the morning.

We’d eventually taken Jane to her host’s house the night before and this morning she looked absolutely radiant when she got to class.

“I want to see the negatives you have from our four shoots this week. We’ll project the best and I want you to tell me your strategy for printing. What paper, timing, and any other details you might have. Then you’ll get time to print them and we’ll have group critique this afternoon. And there is one caveat. The picture you choose to print cannot be from your own photo shoot. That means Ari cannot use a photo from the sanctuary. Lady Jane cannot use a photo from her village scene. Dominique cannot use a photo from the construction site. Nate cannot use a photo from the brothel. Work outside your usual comfort zone.”

Viewing negatives on a light table is very different than viewing them projected on a screen. Josh even had a projector that would project the 4x5 negatives or the 8x10 from Jane’s huge studio box. He pointed out details in our negatives that might have gone unnoticed under a loupe, but were obvious when projected. We each had to tell what we were trying to achieve with the selected photo and after lunch, we went to the darkrooms.

I’d done some work like what I wanted to do with my negatives—most notably Patricia’s ghost scene and the ghosts Judy staged in the cemetery for her birthday. I was using the two 4x5 negatives I’d shot in the village. It would take me three or four prints to get what I wanted out of the two negatives. When I finished with a 12x15 print, I was very happy. It took until four-thirty for us to finish printing and drying the prints so we could display and discuss them.

I was pretty pleased with my photo, but this was an exhibit that showed why each of us had been chosen for participation in this intersession intensive.

Jane and Ari had both chosen their brothel photos. They’d each captured something very different from the other. Jane’s photo showed a bright and cheerful Mel being very seductive in her demeanor. Ari’s photo of Chloe was dark and brooding. It told a very different story of the brothel than Jane’s. I hoped we’d eventually get to display a photo from each of the settings so we could see the differences in the treatments of four photographers in four settings.

Dominique used his photo of the couple at the filling station with the car. He had a shallow depth of field and focus was only on the couple with the setting blurring around them.

That was somewhat similar to my selection of the village setting where I’d shot only two photos. I’d printed the sharp focus image that had great depth of field and a lot of detail in the shadow where my sinister man was standing. I cut the image so I could make a mask of the detailed woman. Then I printed again, blocking out her image. On the same photo, I switched negatives and masked the other part of the photo, printing the blurry woman in the foreground. The result was a clear picture of the sinister man and a soft foreground that could just barely be distinguished as a woman.

We were all pretty pleased with the results of our printing and then Josh critiqued them. Ouch. He wasn’t unkind, but he was unrelenting when he saw something that could have been done better. It was nearly seven by the time we finally headed home for the night. The next day, we were to print a scene of our choice from each of the four days. It would include reprinting our first image, taking the suggestions into account.

“We have just three more days of our little adventure. Four if you count the Lord’s Day tomorrow. Which you should. This is where I turn you loose in the wild. Your task is to find a model and photograph him, her, or it in a setting that you design someplace in the Melbourne metroplex. In doing this, you should incorporate ideas and techniques you have learned this past nine days,” Josh said after our grueling exhibition and critique Saturday afternoon.

“Uh ... How are we supposed to find a model?” Dominique asked. Josh looked askance at him.

“There are two and a half million people in the Melbourne metroplex. Surely you can find one person in the batch who will pose for you and give you a release. Those forms, by the way, are available from Larry and Vince. You should take a few in case you need to shoot more than one person.”

“Any other restrictions?” I asked.

“You’re thinking of posing for each other. I’d have to consider that cheating. As would be calling one of the models we have already used this week or using any one of your hosts or the staff here. The idea is to get out and find the right scene and model. Make it happen. You are portrait photographers on the loose in a new city. Find me the perfect portrait. You have until Tuesday at noon to be back here ready to process your film and print your award-winning portrait. We will spend Wednesday with an exhibition. We have started it with your photos done this week. Any additional photos you would like displayed need to be dry and mounted by ten o’clock Wednesday morning when our guests will be arriving for the viewing. Be ready.”

I think we all just stared at him for a minute and then started packing up our equipment.

“I would say that we should go out and start looking now,” Jane said to me. “But I think we are supposed to go on our search alone. And I was hoping I could spend a night or two ... um ... intimate with you before we need to part.”

“When I left this morning, Dale said she was going into the mountains for a particular scene she wanted to paint and that I had the house for the weekend. Why don’t we stop at the pub for dinner and then go home.”

“Yes, let’s.”

We had a very lazy Sunday morning in bed as we explored each other thoroughly without having a third person to include. By the time churches were out, though, we’d had coffee and were loaded up with our small cameras and releases. My plan was to find a model, get a release, and take some pictures today, then invite her to a specific location to take large format photos on Monday.

Yes. I said ‘invite her.’ I had no plan to find a model that wasn’t female. I’d taken some pretty good photos of men this week, but my heart wasn’t in it to use one for my final project.

We went separate ways and promised to meet back at the house at eight o’clock.

I’d been in Australia for ten days and really hadn’t done anything by myself. Yes, I took the bus from RMIT to Dale’s house, but I left a group of people I’d gotten to know really well and gone directly to the home of a woman I’d known for a year. When Dale was gone this weekend, Jane had happily stepped in as a lover and companion. Now, here I was, just wandering around a foreign country on my own on a Sunday afternoon.

It could have been traumatic, but at least everyone spoke English. Sort of. I still had trouble understanding some of the folks with a heavier accent, and the slang that got tossed around sometimes threw me. When Dom had shown his photos of the couple at the filling station, we were told it was called a servo. And who knew my slacks were called daks? Still, no one seemed to have difficulty understanding my English except, occasionally, Jane.

I mention that because the first thing I did when I stepped off the tram in an unfamiliar part of Melbourne, was to stop at a pub for lunch. It was a lively place and there was a Sunday band playing in one corner. I guess ‘a Sunday band’ was a bunch of locals who got together to play music, but it was really more of a jam session than an organized performance. I got a small beer, having learned already not to try to handle too much Aussie beer, and the waitress asked if I wanted pie and sauce.

“What kind of pie?” I asked. She looked at me strangely.

“The usual. A meat pie. You know. Beef in a shell.”

That sounded okay.

“What kind of sauce?”

There was a moment of silence near me and then people around started laughing. She shook her head.

“Just sit tight, mate. Didn’t realize you were that new here.”

She left and a few minutes later returned with a beer, a pastry, and a bottle of ketchup.

“This is a coldie. That’s a pie. This is sauce,” she explained, pointing to each one.

“Oh.” I nodded and the people near me laughed again.

I bit into the pie and immediately decided the sauce was a good idea. A fellow who looked a little like Walter Matthau dragged a chair up to my little table set his beer on it.

“G’day, mate. Wha’ brings you to Straya?” he asked. “Just on a walkabout?”

“I’m a photographer taking lessons at RMIT for a couple of weeks.”

“Well, now, you want to go out the Great Ocean Road and have a visit to the Twelve Apostles. That’s just a couple of hours south of here. Beauty!”

“Oh. I’m kind of limited to Melbourne proper or the city at large. And I’m a portrait photographer. I’m looking for someone who’ll do some serious posing for me. I do a kind of glamour photos.”

He looked at me and nodded with a wink.

“I know what you’re wanting. The blonde there on the stage with the guitar. That’s my daughter. Jailbait, mind you, but always running around nuddy. I come to watch her play on Sunday’s just to make sure her clothes stay on.”

“I really can’t photograph anyone under eighteen,” I said hurriedly. “She has to sign a model release and her picture would be exhibited at RMIT on Wednesday. It’s our final project.”

“I don’t want to encourage her to that kind of stuff anyway. I’m not pimping out my daughter. Just wanted to make sure I knew what you want,” he said. “So, you want a pretty sheila who’ll bare it all for a glamour photo that will get shown to the public at RMIT and maybe around the world when you leave here and go back home. I suppose you want to sleep with her, too.” He snorted in disgust.

“Uh ... No ... I never sleep with models. It’s strictly about the photo. And there’s no compensation other than getting a really nice copy of the photo, suitable for framing. How bare she gets depends on how well we work together and whether it feels right. There’s no law that says a glamour photo has to be nude,” I said, justifying myself. I pulled out one of the release forms I had in my bag to show him that I was legitimately with a class at RMIT.

“Hmm. All on the level? Still, you’ve got Buckley’s chance of walking up to a sheila and having her agree. Where you plan to take this wonderful portrait?” he asked. I could tell he was still skeptical. I took another sip of beer, having polished off my pie and sauce. Somehow my glass still seemed full.

“Part of my assignment is to find the right location for the shoot. I’m pretty much just wandering around today, looking for the perfect place. I’d like something that really speaks of Australia. I don’t just want to win the competition with the other three photographers, I want to take something home that really encapsulates my experience here.” I was beginning to wax eloquent, so I stopped and took another gulp of beer.

“What you need is a souteneur?” he said with finality.

“A what?” I asked. He looked at me in frustration.

“A ponce.” Blank. “A pimp,” he tried again.

“Oh, no. Like I said, I don’t have money to spend on a model. She just gets a photo. I don’t want to get involved with someone who wants to sell me something. I could always go shoot an old man playing chess in the park,” I said.

“Shoot one for me, too. There’s way too many of them,” the guy said. “No. I don’t mean a pimp to sell girls to you. I mean someone to pimp your service to the right sheila to get you a model who wants you to take her picture. And a place to take the picture. Allow me to introduce myself. Arthur Hughes, at yer service, mate.”

“Uh ... Nate Hart,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Let’s have another round while I consider your needs and what you might have available,” he signaled the waitress to refresh our beers, which I noticed were empty. “Well, some key places would be the MCB cricket pitch, the Flinders Street Railway Station, the St. Kilda Street Bridge, or even St. Kilda Beach. Indoors, there would be Queen Victoria Market, St. Paul’s Cathedral—I could just see a lovely nude stretched out on one of them fancy pews—the State Library Reading Room, the Town Hall, or maybe setting her up on the train. What do you think of those ideas?”

“Well, Mr. Hughes...”

“Art, mate. Yeh don’ call yer pimp mister.”

“Uh ... Sure ... Art, I don’t want the architecture or location to overwhelm the model. I’d like the location to say Australia without being identified as ‘the art museum’ or ‘the university.’ You know, the other day I took pictures in a brothel. I don’t want to repeat that, but you’d look at the picture and say—that’s a prostitute’s room—without identifying that it was a particular brothel on such a street. Understand what I mean?”

“I got ya, mate,” he said, slamming his hand down on the table. “And this is it. Nothin’ says Straya like a pub. Why not take your picture right here?”

“That’s ... That would be kinda cool. Do you think I could get permission to do a shoot here tomorrow during the day?” I asked. “I love the bar.”

The pub was pretty cool. It had a section with a long wooden bar and a lot of little tables, then it had a more open section with a tiny platform for musicians and a dance floor that would hold about four couples at a time.

“You could start taking pictures right now, if ye want,” he said.

“Shouldn’t I talk to the owner or a manager?” I asked.

“Boyo, I am the owner! Get out yer camera and take me picture.”

He pulled a pen out of his pocket and quickly filled in the model release I’d given him. It wasn’t likely that I’d use him as my model, but I had no problems with taking pictures of the guy. He had one of those quirky faces that just screamed to be photographed. I pulled out my Nikon and he posed in what I supposed was intended to be a formal posture. Then he picked up his mug and raised it to me. I moved around a few times to take the pictures from different angles.

“You move around a lot,” he said.

“I have to figure out where the light is best and I have to be sure no one can be identified in the picture except you. I’d have to get a model release from everyone in the pub. I can take their pictures as part of my research, but I can’t exhibit them anyplace.”

“And you think yer going to exhibit my picture?”

“You never can tell,” I said. “When I come back to do the real photoshoot tomorrow, I’ll be using a different camera, a tripod, and maybe an extra light. That’s the one that will be for exhibition. Are you sure you don’t want me to just go down to the park and get an old man playing chess?”

I’d pretty much given up on the idea that I was going to get a woman to model for me. Art had signed a release and he owned the pub. That was pretty good as far as I was concerned.

“Go and take pictures of the pub while I try to figure out where to get you a model,” Art said. “Yo! Blokes listen up! Nate here is doing some professional photography of my pub here, so you need to come over here and sign this form he’s got so I can show the pictures here. He’s going to make the Wallaby Pub famous. Don’t you go hiding from him.”

A couple of people got up and quickly left the pub. I felt bad about that, but there were half a dozen empty mugs at the table they left. I focused on those first and took a picture. Then I turned to the little platform for the band while others in the pub began to file past Art’s table and sign the one release form. I guessed that was okay. Why not have twenty people on one release form? I took a couple pictures of the band. The girl guitarist Art said was his daughter shrugged her shoulders and her shirt fell down baring her left shoulder. It wasn’t indecent, so I took another picture while she grinned at me.

I loved the bar and managed a couple of shots down it as patrons raised their glasses to me. The waitress, who introduced herself as Frankie, invited me behind the bar where I could get a barmaid’s view of the pub. While I was there, she pulled another glass of beer for me and I raised it to her. I might regret so much beer by morning, or maybe yet tonight. I made my way to the toilet to release a portion of my afternoon’s intake and then headed back for my table.

Frankie was at the table in a heated discussion with Art, it seemed.

“And why not me? Am I not pretty enough anymore? You going to replace me behind the bar with a new piece of fluff?”

“Frankie, you know that’s not true, now. I plan to put this famous picture in a frame right above the bar. Now, you really want your bare boobs on display right behind where you’re working?”

She looked over at the bar and the spot he’d pointed at.

“I think I’d get more tips, don’t you?” she asked. “How many times have you told me to pull my shirt down lower or roll my skirt up higher so the blokes would order another round?”

“If you think you want to go naked in the pub...”

“Only for the pickee. What do you think, Nate? Would I be a good enough model for you?” she asked.

She pulled her blouse down below her boobs to show me everything.

“Ah ... Yeah. I mean ... Wow!” I said. I might have been affected by the booze a bit, but those were really nice boobs.

“See there, Artie? Wouldn’t you like to see them up above the bar?”

She turned sharply enough to slap him in the face with one of her breasts, then pulled her blouse back up into place.

“Well, then, Nate. I think we got everything you need. Setting, a model, permission. What time do you want to get started in the morning? Earlier the better,” Art said. He acted like he’d just successfully negotiated a contract for me. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing.

“I can get here pretty early,” I said. “It will take about two hours.”

“Well, let’s start at nine,” he said. “That will give Frankie just enough time to stuff her norks back in her shirt before I open the doors for lunch.”

“Um ... There’s one other thing,” I said as I packed my camera up. “Could you mark where we are on my map? I just got off the tram when I spotted something I thought looked interesting. I have no idea where I am or how to get back to my room.”

I got off the tram after one change at RMIT around six o’clock. Josh had said the lab would be open until nine and I met Vince there. I told him I just wanted to develop a couple of rolls and get some proofs. He said Lady Jane had beaten me back and was in Darkroom two. I went into number three.

I took my time to make sure I got the right mixes and the right length of time for each of the two rolls I shot. I was definitely a little muzzy-headed and had lost track of the number of beers I’d had over my four hours at the pub. It was definitely too much.

Nonetheless, I stepped out of the darkroom with my proof sheets and an 8x10 of Art at seven-thirty.

“Wasn’t sure you were going to emerge,” Jane said from the chair where she was sitting. She was glowing. Her hair had been done, fresh makeup applied, beautiful manicure...

“Are we going out someplace?” I asked.

“It would be nice, since I got all done today,” she grinned. “But not fair since I didn’t warn you. Why don’t we just go down to the pub and have a coldie and pie?”

“Ah ... Say, there’s a nice restaurant called the Florentino, Dale told me about. It’s not too far. Why don’t we drop off our things at the house and I’ll pull on a jacket and tie so you’re not ashamed to be with me. I’ve had enough of pub food for today and with you all dolled up, I’d like to take you someplace nice.”