This Day In History, 1996

I'm scouring my brain for something to write about today and I keep coming up empty-handed, so I was just wondering if there is *anything* special about it. I decided to search my stock photo database and see if I'd made any memorable pictures on this date. Nope. Tomorrow, Saturday, is no day to be blogging and therefore I won't write anything at all so I looked in the database again and found a very memorable image I created on June 17, 1996, ten years ago.

I‘d just switched from Nikon manual cameras to Canon EOS auto-focus and was all psyched-up to use them professionally after a week of testing. I think my initial investment in my Canon EOS system in the first week was substantial as I had bought two EOS-1N bodies, an EOS-1 (with a Polaroid back), a few zoom lenses, a 50 macro and a 300 telephoto. I was ready.

Just about the time I was all geared-up I had a call from John Dykstra, a special effects guy out in Hollywood. He was working on a new film for Joel Schumacher called "The Iceman," a working title which was released as "Batman & Robin," with George Clooney as Batman, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the villain and Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donell.

John wanted me to do some shooting in New York as they weren't planning to come here and, as Gotham City is based on New York, he needed images custom-made to use as backgrounds (yeah, every time you see an image of Gotham City you're looking at my pictures!). He originally wanted me to shoot large format and I didn't mind, but I thought that shooting 35mm film would be a better idea. We discussed it at length, I sent some samples out to Warner Brothers, we discussed it some more and came to an agreement to shoot it with 35mm.

So... when we began talking details and he learned that I'd just bought all this new stuff he asked me if I had zoom lenses or prime lenses? Well, most of what I'd bought were zooms. He said that zoom lenses wouldn't do because they all exhibit pin-cushion distortion and the effects he was going to create with my images required *no* distortion. He asked if I could shoot with prime lenses.

No problem! I took my trusty ol’ Nikon F3s out of the closet, put new batteries in them, dusted off my 11 Nikkor lenses and I was in the movie business. I made this image of the Chrysler Building at dusk on June 17, 1996 while on the Batman shoot.

Have a good weekend, see you next week.