The Photographer

Translated…

Off into the distance, I saw a figure that looked like a man. Using his long camera lens looking at something very concentrated, he was a tall guy, a man who’s photographing something; he stood, slouched behind his tripod, looked out over the messy grass patches away from the Great Wall, with a black cloth, covering his head, looking at the frames, all of a sudden, he’d started, rustling around, for something to test the light, looked like a professional photographer. Hard working away.

the photograph from the papers here…

In this deserted part of the Great Wall, bumping into someone who was also from a distant land, such coincidence. I’d gone up to say hi to him, found, that he’s a foreigner, with his palms, on the just put up but wanted to set up again, tripod, using the same brand of equipment as I have, and still, his size is big and tall, and naturally, the equipment he was using was a size larger than mine. The foreigner’s camera, as I’d taken a look, was a lighter kind that’s remodified by himself, a six-by-nine, and mine, an easily folded, for carrying convenience six-by-six German antique. The two of us met up on this abandoned part of the Great Wall, we’d become quick friends, started studying, and playing with each other’s weird looking toolkits, there were a ton of things we’d talked about, we’d even wanted to, trade our cameras!

Not long thereafter, the foreigner told me that he was collecting the photo files for a Dutch printing company, and he’d needed to use up ALL of his films, and, there were just three, to four cut that’s left inside his camera, and he just wanted to photograph the Great Wall, against the backdrops of the mountains more beautifully, and he’d finally told me, how he’d hoped, that someone could give him some of the films.

There was no one else around, and so, all I could do, was open my backpack up, sorted through the film bags, the foreigner, with that childishness about him, counted the rolls, said that there were seven, and, he’d rubbed his red giant hands, and accepted my two rolls of accidental films. In order to show that he was fair toward me, the foreign photographer took out a one hundred RMB bill, plus a can of beer, then, drank down the other can with glee; not forgetting to exclaim on how generous I, a foreign sojourner was, and the beauties of the sceneries.

We’d parted ways, went to collect our separate picture data files now, we were both on business trips.

This, is how two complete strangers who’d bumped into one another by chance had an interaction, and that just shows, that opportunity to interact with others in the world is always there, all you gotta do, is to reach out, and grab onto those chances of interacting with a stranger, and, I’m sure, that the writer of this article had never met this foreigner again…but, meeting up with the foreigner surely gave his business trip some colors that’s for certain.