ok warren. look what u started. i ran a google search as it is fun & i'm bored, and found this story. like it, enigma


it is from a magazine article on editorship in journalism by a professional photographer:

Well, I recall one day, many years ago, when I was asked to do a studio shoot for our food department. They had a cover story for their section on the gastronomic pleasures of eating raw oysters. The head of the department gave rather explicit instructions on what she wanted to see in the photograph. She wanted a single oyster, on the half shell, nestled in a container of cracked ice and the oyster should be close up and prominent.

I guess that about says it for me. I mean, there isn't much room to be very creative, with those kind of instructions laid before me. So, with a supply of fresh Blue Point oysters (which are produced locally in the waters of Blue Point, Long Island, I might add) and some buckets of crushed ice, I retired to the studio and proceeded to work. I was using a 4 X 5 studio view camera to make the shot and I utilized the tilts and swings of the lens board and film back to control any distortion. I lit the oyster and its bed of cracked ice with a large soft box and then to get some glistening highlights, I used a weak spot light, off to the side. I filled the 4 X 5 frame with the required image and proceeded to expose several sheets of film. After they were processed, I made an 11 X 14 print from the best one (we were only shooting black and white in those days) and took the print out to the editor in charge of the feature section.

She took the print from my hand and turned beet red and gasped.

"Oh, my God!" she cried. "We can't use this."

"Why not," I demanded.

"I had no idea that it would look so much like female genitalia," was her response.

The photo never ran. Some other story made the cover and the oyster story ran in the back of the section, without art.

I dunno. I thought it was a good shot. I guess that she was a better judge of oysters and female genitalia than I. But, I thought it was a good shot. I wish that I had a copy of it to add to my story, here. But, maybe it's just as well. Perhaps it would be considered too risqué by the web police and we might be relegated to the porn side of the web.