Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

I am a patient guy, for the most part.

The only think I am really impatient about is when a computer is too slow.

For years, it seems I only ran into these things away from home. At the departmetn of motor vehicles. At work. It didn’t seem to matter where. So at home, I always had a computer that didn’t make me wait. And it’s not like I was spending top dollar on computers. I like to hang on to computers for at least four years before I replace them.

Well, my PowerBook didn’t make it into its fourth year, because it got rained on. It’s a long story, but basically if we had air conditioning in this house, my windows would have stayed closed, and I would not have had a problem with my laptop. (Though its 640 MB limit of RAM was irking me slightly, I knew i could have dealt with it for at least another year.)

Because I have lined up some freelance work, I have enough money to replace the laptop with a new Mac mini. Some of you may think I am nuts to go for what is essentially a low-end Mac. Here’s why I chose the mini:

1. I already have a good 21-inch CRT that I picked up at a county government surplus auction for $12. It’s not calibrated, but a decent CRT at least displays all the colors, unlike the latest low-end iMac, which uses a Twisted Nematic LCD panel (making it less useful for toning photos).

2. If I get enough money later, I can use an Apple Cinema Display like the one I have at work. (Yes, I know, I could connect one of these to a new iMac and use it as a second display. But, why would I want to do that?)

3. If I decide I want to use the Mac mini for work, I can stick it in a bag and connect it to a monitor there. Or I can bring my $12 monitor and leave it at work. (This might be useful when covering LPGA or NASCAR.) I would not feel comfortable lugging around an iMac, and since I would also not feel comfortable leaving it places, I’d be doing a lot of lugging when covering some events.

4. It’s cheaper, but it doesn’t suck all that much. My only regret is that it can’t run Civilization IV, because of its relatively weak 3D graphics support. Boo.

5. It’s not really the low-end Mac, because I got the faster Mac mini available (2 GHz), with the DVD burner on it, so I can store the gigabytes of photos I’ll be taking on blank DVDs. Also, I upped the RAM to 2 GB, which is a bit out of character for me as a DIY type, but I am not really interested in opening a Mac mini. I’m really not.

So, why am I writing about patience? Because I ordered this thing Sept. 1 and it’s still not here yet. It shipped (likely from a Taiwanese factory) on Sept. 5 and was handed off to FedEx Ground on Sept. 6. FedEx says it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is good because one of my freelance deadlines is coming very soon. Y’know. The freelance deadline that inspired me to buy this thing. The one that is paying for it.

And every time I wait for my backup computer to do something (it’s a six-year old iBook 500MHz with a screen that doesn’t always turn on), I get even more impatient, knowing that I’ve paid for something better, but because I wanted to save $20 on shipping, it’s not here yet.

A strange thing happened at work Friday. I don’t know that it is really all that strange. But it’s not something I have encountered before.

I was covering the Watkins Glen Grand Prix reenactment, which is basically a street festival in which people drive antique cars a few laps around the village of Watkins Glen, and no competitive racing is allowed (probably because if it were allowed, no insurance company would cover it.)

A couple of things were weird about this event: A lot of people were wearing blue photo bibs issued by Watkins Glen International, which is a racetrack up the hill from the village. So it made anyone who wasn’t wearing a photo bib look like they didn’t belong. (Despite the fact that the bibs don’t really belong off the track…)

So as I was walking in the street, doing my job, festivalgoers who weren’t allowed onto the street were telling me that I was blocking their view, and asking me to move (in an angry tone.) I was bothered by them not asking people with bibs to please move.

Later, when I was photographing the race, I wanted a different angle, so I found a nice spot near another photographer. I started taking pictures, and eventually I saw another person’s head about two inches in front of my lens. So I pointed the lens to the left and kept shooting. People get in front of my camera all the time. If I don’t like the frame, I have to change what’s in it.

I heard the owner of the head shout “that’s what you did to me!” but I didn’t realize what he meant, because I didn’t think it was a big deal that his head was in my frame… so I wasn’t sure what “that” was. Plus, I was shooting, and my mind was not in guessing games mode. I looked at him and saw he was holding a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera, pretending to take pictures of oncoming cars. So I asked him what he was talking about. “You stood right in front of me,” he said. This was untrue, because I was at least five or ten feet away from the sidewalk, which is the limit of where the festival volunteers would let the masses stand. So I didn’t understand his objection and kept on shooting.

Eventually I figured out why he had come to stand in front of my lens. He was so upset that I had blocked his view, that he felt the need to obstruct my view. But since I am not bothered by unexpected things in my shot, I don’t think he got whatever response he expected from me.

There are two ways of looking at this, as I can see it:

1) The street was closed to the public, and I was standing in the street because the organizers of the festival and law enforcement officials permitted me to be there. The upset fan should have known that there would be a chance for his view to be blocked, especially since most of the photographers covering the event were standing nearby. His entrance onto the closed street to obstruct me was inappropriate.

2) Photojournalists are ordinary citizens like any other; they have no more rights than other citizens. Just because I was not stopped by nearby police for entering a street that was closed to the public doesn’t mean that I had permission or right to be in that particular spot on the street. Perhaps my being on that part of the closed street was inappropriate because I obstructed the view of others. If I had been about ten paces to my right, there would be nobody to obstruct. (But the angle there was less interesting.)

I haven’t figured out the answer, though the idealist egalitarian in me is leaning toward the second option. Though, I think if I had one of those blue bibs from the track up the hill, I bet nobody would have said a word about where I was. And I really don’t think I was right in front of him, since I was so far away from the masses, and because he would have had plenty of opportunities to see the cars, which are wider and longer than I am.

Technorati Tags: Watkins Glen, Grand Prix, vintage cars, ethics