The Map
I was asked to help an old man to sort out his library for him. When I got there I did not realise that the library was so large. It was going to take me a month to go through everything.
I decided to start from the top shelves and work down, so getting the ladder out of the broom- cupboard I set it up against the shelves.
The books were all in alphabetical order, so that made things easier for me. After about an hour I was half way through the B’s and I saw a book on magic beans, this intrigued me, so thinking I had done enough for now I got down off the ladder and decided to take a break. Sitting at the table in the centre of the room I opened the book and started reading. The explanation for the magic or jumping beans was that grubs that were laid inside the beans were growing, and by moving about and that was what made them move.
Being a little disappointed in the book I got back to work on the shelves. I went through books on cactus, cameras, dwarves and giants. By lunch time it had started to rain and was getting a little dark, so I switched on the lights.
I took out my flask and sandwiches and had my lunch before starting again on the books, the next book I took off the shelf and opened a piece of paper fell to the floor so I came down the ladder and picked it up. It was a map and on checking it it looked like a map of the house that I was working in.
It showed the shelves that I was working on, and at the right hand of the fourth shelf there was a mark, so on examining the shelf I found a small switch. I flicked the switch and the bookcase started to move. Before long I could see that there was a room behind the bookcase and in the room was a chest.
All excited I could not get into the room fast enough, and opening the chest I could not believe my eyes, the chest was full of guess what… MORE BOOKS.
Ken Smith
IMAGES
The angle. The light. The composition. The contrast. That was always the problem. Light against dark flared and lost definition – but grey on grey lost interest.
Could he win this competition? Would it be the way to re-start his career as a photographer after the – unpleasantness? (Don’t think about the – unpleasantness. Always be positive. That was what his shrink had said. And the shrink should know. She was being paid enough that she had to know.)
How far away from the dirt-road dared he walk, to get the shot he wanted? How exacting should he be in the demands he made? After all, he knew he was top-class – and how many other top-class people would bother to drive all the way out here? A competition with prestige, sure – but a limited field.
Hell – that was a stupid way to talk about it! The field was un-limited, if you wanted to talk about the desert! But the guy who was putting up the money had been very specific about where the shots had to be taken. Could he really check that? The temptation to dishonesty – again – was like something crawling round his feet. He stamped about, kicking up the dust, as if he’d seen one of those tiny scorpions.
And when he raised his eyes from looking down at his past, he saw the shot he wanted. A cactus straight out of a Western – but that wasn’t enough, was it? Everybody did those. No – this one had a piece of paper caught on its spines, halfway up the left-hand arm, where the wind had put it. That was what he had to capture: the contrast between nature and humanity – a piece of paper in all that empty waste – and the fact that it was chance. That he hadn’t come out here with a ladder, and contrived the shot, just to be picturesque.
So he kept on taking picture after picture, time-stamped, date-stamped, to prove that there were no footprints anywhere near, no disturbance of the sand – and to do that, he had to use his biggest lenses, on maximum zoom, and his digital cameras as well – oh, he used his skill in the composition, too – but he’d use his judgement to choose the image that would win the prize, and his craft in developing (old-fashioned chemical processes, down to the level of the molecules, way beyond pixels) – he’d – show them, that was it!
But the way it worked out didn’t match the image he’d had of his success.
He got a job out of it, though, a good job, a job for life, with freedom to take as many “art” pictures as he wanted, working for one of those casino-hotel complexes in Vegas. Given it by the man who owned it, personally – well, probably the man behind the man who officially owned it. He was the guy who’d set up the whole competition, and he’d stipulated that all the entrants had to come to him and show him their pictures, in person, in his room at the hotel, with big guys on the doors who had bulges under their shoulders that weren’t their wallets.
The big guy had looked at the picture. Then he’d got out a magnifying glass. Then he’d smiled. A big smile, and not just because he was a big guy. Then he’d said, “You got any more of these?”
“Sure. How many d’you want?”
And the big guy had said, “All of them. And the negatives. And your hard drives.” And he’d paid. Well. Very, very well. And there’d never been another word about the competition. Just a phone-call and a letter and the job.
The camera doesn’t lie, they say. But not everyone can see what it shows. And it can’t show everything. Here, for instance, are some other images.
There’s a guy, in a convertible, with the top down. He likes the wind in his hair. He’s driving through the desert, to dig up something that’s very important to a very big man. The guy knows just where he’s supposed to be going, because he has a piece of paper on the seat beside him. And he keeps looking down at it, to check, until…
Is that the contrast you were looking for?
Mike Rogers
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