The Big Picture

The Big Picture

Walter was a good photographer, one of the best in the business even if he did say so himself. He said that his ‘great gift’ was the ability to see what others could not, and then capture that vision so that others could share in his ‘genius’. His ‘great flaw’, not that he would ever admit to it, was his overpowering competitiveness, especially as it rose to the dizzying heights of arrogance. That was especially true in his relationship to his brother Elliot, who was also a photographer, and who also worked for the same company. He was the first to be hired, and helped his brother get the job.

 No one liked working with Walter, or even listening to him when he talked about his work. You could see beauty in his work, but listening to him talk about it could drain the soul out of that beauty.

The brothers worked for a high powered advertising firm, part of a small team of photographers that were paid very well. The next project ahead of them was to fly down to Australia as part of a big tourism promotion.

Before the flight, there was the bosses called ‘briefing’, about which Walt would mutter that there would be nothing brief about it. Its stated purpose was to inform the photographers and the writers what they should concentrate on when in Australia.

One of the many vice presidents of the company gave them a power point presentation to show them what the team was expected to do. His name was Yancy, but the Walter always referred to him as Nancy, as he dressed pretty, and was meticulous about his appearance. Yancy spent a lot of time talking and showing pictures of the Southern Cross, the constellation of five stars that was on the right half of the Australian flag. It was a familiar part of the southern sky at night, much like the North Star and the Milky Way were in the north.

Yancy went on and on about how important it was for the photographers to get great pictures of the Southern Cross, of how it had been an important symbol of the ancient Egyptians (it was more northerly visible then), the place where the sun Horus was crucified.at the end of winter. Walter grumbled, and was heard by those sitting near him that he did not want to listen to this ‘Horus manure’ and that he was going to concentrate on everything but the Southern Cross. No one was going to tell him what to take pictures of. He was the ‘genius’, not ‘fancy Mr. Nancy’.

Yancy tried to tell a joke, as well as attempting to show how knowledgeable he was, by mentioning that something called the Coriolis effect made the toilets and drains flow clockwise, as opposed to the counter-clockwise flow of northern toilets. That showed, as he constantly pointed out, that Australia was a very, very different place from North America.

Walter does his own research

When he got home, Walter engaged in his own private research, so that he could make his own choices as to what he would photograph. Much to his delight, he discovered that the Coriolis effect only influenced the direction of the circular flow of hurricanes, not something small like a toilet. The reason for the different toilet flow was because their water jets were pointed in the opposite direction. He was going to be sure to tell the others about this. Yancy was a total idiot. And Walter’s brother Elliot, who had nodded his head (and not in falling asleep) to everything that Yancy said, probably believed all that nonsense. Walter thought he might be able to use that to take a shot at his brother.

Still it look like Yancy was right about one thing. Many things in Australia were different: no baseball or hockey, they drove on the wrong side of the street, they had Christmas in  summer, the white Christmas would be the whitecaps of the waves crashing on the beach, not snow.

First Night in Australia

           On the first night, the photographers and writers, a group of five, had a small party at a local bar. The others drank quite a bit. Usually he would drink with them toe-to-toe, another demonstration of how he was better than they were, but this night he nursed only a few drinks, and he had told the bartender to water down his gin and tonic, upping the tonic and lowering he gin. He had a plan. He was going to get up extra early in the morning and take pictures of the sunrise as it reflected off of the ocean – nothing involving the Southern Cross.

The Next Morning

Just as he got up that morning, there was a strange and powerful rumbling, and he became a minute dizzier than he had ever been. He couldn’t figure it out, as he had not had much to drink. When, after about 20 minutes, the rumbling and the dizziness ended (maybe it was one of those clockwise toilet hurricanes, he gathered up his equipment, and headed out of the hotel to the beach nearby. He smiled to himself, thinking that he was the only one of the group up and working, and that he would capture pictures that no one else would get, including his brother Elliot. What he didn’t know was that his brother was already outside, and by the seashore, photographing the sky, the sunrise in particular. But Walter couldn’t see him, as Elliot was about one mile down the beach..

           When Walter got to the shore he looked at the sky, and quietly muttered to himself, “Everything does look different in this country, the animals, and now even the sunrise It looks like the sun is rising in the west. It must be some kind of tropical optical illusion.” He then proceeded to take his pictures of the ocean, both from the beach, and from waist deep in the ocean. His pictures would make him the star of the show.

           But he was wrong. His brother Elliot, who had taken many photographs of the sky, especially the sunrise, had made the right decision. The sun, for the first and only time in the history of the earth, was rising in the west. It would set in the east that night, but after than the earth would right itself, spinning again in its usual way. Elliot would have the first pictures of this strange phenomenon, and those pictures would be published in media around the world. Many interviews would follow.  He would also include the pictures of the western sunrise in his first, but not to be his only book. He would become the more famous of the two brothers. Reference to Walter thereafter would typically be “and his brother is also a photographer.”

           And that was to be the big picture.