PHOTOGRAPHY
I’ve taken hundreds of photos of automobile mishaps
All in a day’s work
Some photographers take pictures of beautiful models.
Some lucky photographers disembark with their camera equipment from private jets in exotic locations to set up on sunny sandy beaches and photograph young women in bikinis.
Some photographers do in-studio portraits of the rich and famous.
Some photographers capture upscale homes for real estate companies.
I met a woman once who was the photographer for a hospital. That was interesting.
On social media I was connected with a young female photographer, who, as part of her job, took a photographs of U.S. presidents in the White House.
I took pictures of auto accidents. That was my job.
I didn’t venture out in the best of weather most of the time.
If it’s a sunny day, nice and clear, people usually stay on the road.
If it’s low visibility, with plenty of snow and patches of ice, and on the radio police are issuing warnings for everyone to stay home, well, that’s when I ventured out to take pictures.
It’s not just if it bleeds it leads. It’s part of a public service.
Seeing is believing.
If, on the front page of the local newspaper, readers see a crumpled car with a door off, and the report of the driver and passengers are not in very good condition, it provides an incentive for people to slow down- and stay home in bad weather.
The worst one that comes to mind was while driving 20 kilometres to work and I counted over 30 cars in the ditch. (Actually, if I remember right, it was 42 or 52 cars in the ditch, but you’re not going to believe that.) I took photographs out my windshield, between the motion of the wiper blades, keeping the snow off the screen.
Then when I got to work, there was a report that 40 kilometres away roads were blocked so badly by snow the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment there couldn’t move their police cars.
So, of course, I drove out there.
I took photographs of RCMP officers and local volunteers clearing out the RCMP parking lot and pushing police cars through snow and ice.
That photograph is around here somewhere.
Oh. Memory jogs.
I did, come to think of it, photograph one beach bunny in a cheesecake pose on sunny beach sand once in my long photography career. I’d nearly forgotten about that. Maybe I should write about that sometime.
