Snap Shots: by Harry Flashman

The hand-held exposure meter is now officially dead

The hand-held exposure meter is now officially dead. Those of you hoarding your old light meter should take the batteries out, clean it, place it in a cabinet with some silica gel, and make a card with “Old fashioned light meter” written on it, and start your own photographic museum.
Now the reason I say that is not because light meters are not useful in photography - they are! However, the light meters inside today’s cameras are so good, you don’t need to check them with a bulky, hand-held piece of extra photographic equipment. Sometimes technology can work in your favor.

Light meters, both external and internal work on something called 18 percent grey. All photographers who want to understand photography a little more should become acquainted with the colour known as 18 percent grey. Why? Because after you understand 18 percent grey, you have complete control over blacks and whites in your photographs - and by that, I mean in colour photography, not just the B&W kind.
The really dedicated photo buffs will recognize 18 percent grey as being the cornerstone of the “Zone System” and Ansel Adams superb prints are trotted out with sage mutterings that if you understood the zone system, then your photos would look like his too. This is, unfortunately, frog spawn. Ansel Adams spent many hours painstakingly printing his B&W work, specifically burning in some areas, holding back others and if you think he didn’t then think again.

However, here is the “short course” on the Zone System. What you have to remember at all times is just the simple fact that the meter in your camera knows intimately what is 18 percent grey, and is programmed to produce as much 18 percent grey as possible. In other words, point the camera at your subject and the meter will work out a combination of shutter speed and aperture to give an exposure to get the whole shot as close to 18 percent grey as possible. This is irrespective of whatever name the camera manufacturer gives to the metering system and how many points it meters from. The common denominator is 18 percent grey, and that comes from the settings your meter dictates.
Now this works for the majority of shots - 18 percent grey is close enough, and the processor at your friendly photoshop can adjust the rest from there - but it is always a compromise. You do not even realise what a compromise it really is until you take a photograph of a white car or a black cat, and see that it has been printed grey.
This is one reason why I keep on saying that if you run the camera in the fully A for automatic mode, you will only get A for “average” pictures. What you have to do to get whites or blacks is to run the camera in the metered manual mode instead. Remember that when you are photographing the white car the exposure indicated by the camera is the one that will make the white colour 18 percent grey. To get the colour back to white it will need more light on the film.
Here’s what you do. Let us imagine that your camera tells you that the exposure should be f16 @ 1/60th of a second. You need more light to fall on the emulsion, so make your exposure f 11 @ 1/60th and another at f8 @ 1/60th. That gives you both one and two full stops of light more. One of those two will give you a white car.
Now when photographing a black object, the camera meter will indicate a shutter speed and an aperture to give you another 18 percent grey object. There is too much light falling on the film emulsion this time. What you have to do is cut down on the amount of light getting into the camera. Again imagine that the indicated exposure is f16 @ 1/60th. You want to darken things, so take two shots with one at f16 @ 1/125th and another at f16 @ 1/250th. Again this is one and two stops decrease in light levels. One of these will give you a black car!
Simply - to produce white, give it more light. To produce black, wind it back!

Never say “never again”

I would like to dedicate this week’s column to somebody who wrote me a beautiful hand written letter recently; she didn’t give any email address or phone number but her letter was very gentle and lovely and very personal. Edith is having a tough time and I just want to let you know, Edith, that I’m right there with you. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with me; I empathise and sympathise. Upon reading this week’s ‘female perspective’ Edith, I hope you’ll be able to do the same for me.

Thank you for reading.

For a year now I’ve been writing for people just like you and me; for women in general and for those of us living in this beautiful but sometimes perplexing country, in particular. But all good things must come to an end and I’ve decided to take a break from the column for now. Quite honestly, I am a bit overwhelmed by the response and I never thought it would take up so much of my time. But it does, and now all those things that I put off until tomorrow are covered in dust on shelves all around my house. Tomorrow has finally arrived and I can’t put off my housekeeping any longer.
Sometimes I wonder where all the time goes but it’s certainly gone. It’s always difficult leaving something you love doing but you have to be brave and read the signs. Get out whilst the going’s good; retire at the top. The last thing I would ever want to do is drag on like some tired old bag. Oh dear, oh dear, I’ve seen that happen to others before. They stay in the job too long and miss out on the time to move on and then become deluded that the job needs them more than they need the job; even if they’re useless at the job in the first place! You can never let ego get in the way. The thought of becoming bitter, twisted and rancid is hellish. Just keep your dignity and self-respect and move quietly on.
I should let you into a bit of a secret. The column takes me quite a long time to write. English is my second language and so I have to think very carefully about the vocabulary and the sentences. I would have liked my husband to help me a bit more but he always claims to be ‘too busy’. I must say, I never quite understood how ‘drinking beer’ can also mean ‘busy’. I suspect that he’s jealous that I get more mail than he does for his column, although he would never admit it. I’m lucky to have a daughter who is incredibly well-read and extremely literate who sometimes proof reads my work and edits it when necessary. It was quite funny when I wrote about her; I’m sure she would have preferred to delete the whole thing but she didn’t. She knows how much writing has meant to me.
I hope that you, the readers, have found the column entertaining and maybe even on occasions, informative. In the world we live in, which is absolutely dominated by men, I think it is so important to make sure that everybody has a voice. I can only hope that in some small way, females out there have felt represented. Just look around the globe at all the wars and conflict and see who’s in charge - men. It’s all aggression and macho stuff from them. Think about it - it’s unbelievable. Today there are only twenty two females actually running countries. That includes three Queens, who have to answer to a parliament and a couple of presidents who were unelected. I always get the impression that men are only too keen to put a female in ceremonial roles, just as long as they don’t have any ‘real’ power.
It is clearly twice as hard for a woman to be elected or even get to the stage where she can get elected. But look at organisations or countries which are run by women, like Helen Clark in New Zealand and you’ll see a country which cares about things that really matter. Not guns and war and money but the environment, education, health and peace. It’s as if men never got out of the habit of playing with toy guns when they were young and women are still sugar and spice and all things nice! I still can’t believe that parents give toy guns to their kids. I mean, they were only invented to do one thing. Don’t fathers think about that?
Unfortunately, there are always a few women who men will point out as examples to prove me wrong. Thatcher was a bit of a war-mongerer and I’m afraid that Golda Meir didn’t seem to mind a fight. Granted, there are those who give females a bad name but they’re mostly all gone now which is a real bonus; eaten up by their own greed, I suppose. But people like this are exceptions. Look at most work places where women are in the majority and you’ll see a place which is mostly harmonious. There’s a school in Bangkok like that; KIS (Kesinee) international school is run almost entirely by women and it’s just about the best school I’ve ever seen in my whole life. They just got a guy in at senior level for the first time this year. Good luck to him!
I’m sorry, but I’m getting a bit emotional now, because it’s time to say ‘goodbye’. I would like to thank some very special friends; Chandra, Kylie, Anne Gabarre, Ivonne, Julie, Emily, Lucia, Christine, Marianne, Oshrit, Dganit and Revital, Yael Rubinstein and of course you, Edith. Thank you also to all of you who have contributed in some way to the column. To Dan the editor and Peter Malhotra, who has done so much for our entire family (he is like a big brother to us) thank you for all your support, friendship and love. Thank you a thousand times. Happily, it is not so much ‘Adieu’ as ‘Au revoir’; I am sure I will be unable to resist writing occasionally and whilst this column will cease, at least I learned one thing from my husband; never say “never again”. Thank you for reading.
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Learn to Live to Learn  by Andrew Watson

In safe hands

Richard Hayward is easy company. Self assured, tremendously well presented, he demonstrates one skill in particular which sadly, appears all too rare these days; he is a first class ‘listener’. He’s nobody’s fool too and in the six months since he took the reigns at Garden International School (GIS) he has brought experience, education and integrity to the position. As a peripatetic person with an impressive CV that includes the British Army, Cambridge University and International Rugby, the cap of leadership fits very snugly indeed.
Richard taught at the Oratory school in Oxfordshire, a boy’s public school; Tony Blair sent his kids to the Brompton branch of the same Catholic foundation. Did he enjoy teaching there? With evident enthusiasm he responds, “Yes! It was lovely countryside and great fun. It’s a boarding school so there was no going home at 5 o’clock! You can get so much done!” He cherished, “getting teams out on Saturdays” and was clearly devoted to the job. He also has fond memories of Kenya, where he worked for three years in a school run by Christina Kenyatta. For Richard, Kenya “was a bit like going back” - he’d also lived there as a boy.
I wonder what effect the army had on his attitudes towards education and how to run a school? “Well, you have to be ultra-organised in the army and then in certain respects, you do lay down procedures - and look at them again if they don’t work. Then there’s self discipline. If you don’t have self-discipline in the army you get locked up. The army taught me to be very confident and to see something through right to the end. You can’t just do your own thing. Most of all, it taught me to be a leader, I suppose. Management skills I’ve probably picked up since then. In the army you have to follow what’s expected, whereas in a school, you have to make it work.”
University in Surrey and a first degree in Mathematics was followed by what was clearly for Richard (his eyes twinkle as he recalls) the highlight of his own personal educational journey - Cambridge. “It was nice meeting common minded people, really. There are a lot of hard working people around there; people who have striven hard to get there. I felt extremely proud to be there and it was something that was very challenging for me.” Absolutely, I felt the same. There’s no place quite like Cambridge, where love of learning resonates from the hearts and minds of its student body. Richard’s Masters is in Education Management; more or less a pre-requisite for leading a school nowadays and he is grateful for the experience; “I learned a lot and I keep drawing on it.”
To be honest, I hadn’t considered observing this admittedly well built, bespectacled yet in some ways diminutive gentlemen, that sport would have featured so prominently in his life, so I was surprised and delighted to discover that he played at national level for Kenya at Rugby twice, once in Manila and once in the World Cup against Namibia. Fantastic! “Ah, yes” I mused, reappraising Richard’s stature, “A fly half or hooker?” Indeed. So he must be quite nippy then? “Not any more!” he laughs, “But I miss sport; I just don’t have any time to play anymore.”
What about music? Fobissea must have inspired him? “I tried to learn piano and drums when I was younger but we kept moving to new countries; it was difficult,” he admits with a tinge of regret. “And I’m a terrible singer,” he confesses, pre-empting my next question. Nonetheless, he professes an eclectic love for music. Unsurprisingly, for someone married to a Filipino, he loves Latino. I have to concur, there’s nowhere quite like Manila to ‘get down’. However, as many have found before him, he feels his dancing will never be quite as wonderfully natural as his wife’s.
Our conversation moves lyrically on to opera; Richard loves it and then, as he claims an affinity for contemporary ‘chart music’ I rather sneakily throw in the term, ‘Black IPs’. But fair dos, he knows who they are. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised; after all he’s been around more than a bit. I wonder whether the strong international favour that has characterised his life is something he consciously applies to leading an international school? Or is Garden rigorously adherent to a British or English system? He seems a little bit affronted by the suggestion, “We’re a bit more organic than that! We try and fit the models of the children … we are truly international.” He uses first languages as an example, “We’re not like other schools where 90% of students might be native English speakers. Only about 20% of our kids are first language English speakers. Yet, over four or five years they develop their English fluency and come out with excellent results. Language is an open door to another world.”
Is there more to education than examination results? “There’s more to life than examination results!” Richard insists, “We want to play sports, put on music festivals and celebrate what it means to be international.” He’s asking a great deal of his teachers then? He nods in agreement, “All the teachers work little miracles here - they have to be flexible, they have to work very hard and sometimes it’s not easy. Being an international school teacher - it’s not an easy job, really. It’s not like a holiday!” Granted, although I’ve seen plenty who seem to think it is. What does he look for in a teacher? His response is immediate; “I look to see if they’re passionate about their teaching. Coming to Thailand is secondary.” But he must ask why they want to come to Thailand? “Yes, we do. They usually tell us something about the beauty of the place. Of course, we have to be very careful about whom we recruit. Everyone takes education very seriously here.”
To end, a big question, about that ‘vision’ thing, which Richard has in abundance. Where will GIS be in five years from now? “I think obviously it’s going to get bigger. I hope the examination results will improve and I hope that the reputation will continue to grow. We want to keep GIS affordable but increase our already ample resources. We try extremely hard to accommodate all the children - all the children that come here deserve a good education and we try and tailor our education to meet their needs; we’ve created different programmes for everybody really. We’ve always been family oriented and open to the community. The children are happy, laughing and running around. We’re developing all the time so within the next three years in terms of numbers, we hope to have separate junior and senior schools with a total of up to eight hundred students. In terms of philosophy, every school should follow its mission statement and everything else should flow from it.”
Richard Hayward is a man you feel instinctively you can trust implicitly. He is also quite clearly a man in control of his own destiny. I leave with the distinct impression that GIS couldn’t be in better, safer, more reliable hands.
Next week: Webster’s – not just a dictionary
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