Uzi
Yesterday morning we filmed Uzi in his workshop. He was shy and appeared nervous about the accuracy of his English. But after some time filming, his demeanor changed and he opened up about his life in Kfar Giladi — where he was born, met his volunteer wife Kathy, and raised five girls. Nearly 70 years old, Uzi is a pensioner who is only paid by the kibbutz to work four hours a day repairing bicycles, club cars, and kalnoeets (electric tricycles mostly used by the older people).
But he often works more hours without pay. He says working without payment doesn’t bother him because he likes to help people and he loves what he does — he was busy fixing a friend’s tractor free of charge when we showed up. When asked why most of his job responsibilities were transferred to the kibbutz quarry a few years ago, he responded that it was a topic he felt uncomfortable talking about. “Everything is fine,” he said. We promptly moved on from the issue, though it is something that continues to intrigue us.
Uzi also flies gliders during his free time. He said he always wanted to be a pilot, but struggled with the academic tests required of such a post. Gliding is his way of pursuing his lifelong passion. We plan to film Uzi as he glides, and we are considering taking a ride with our camera to shoot some aerial shots of the kibbutz and its environs (sounds fun right?).
Everybody Makes Mistakes
We’ve reviewed some of the footage of the shoot, and have recognized one of our errors. We still occasionally forget to lock the exposure. In tricky lighting environments like Uzi’s workshop, auto-exposure fails miserably. One moment Uzi’s face was perfectly exposed, but as soon as he stepped close to the windows and openings of the warehouse, his face became underexposed because the camera was compensating for the bright sunlight.
Exposure lock remedies this problem very quickly. It allows you to lock the exposure on your subject’s face, and then remains properly exposed when he steps into a much brighter area, such as a room with large windows. The windows will appear as overexposed white glowing squares in the background, but most of the time you don’t care about what is going on through the windows, you care about your subject’s face. It seems like a simple task to lock exposure (and the XH A1 makes it really easy with the placement of the exposure lock button), but amidst all the other distractions of shooting, it is sometimes easily forgotten. Most of the time we get it right, and hopefully in the future we won’t mess it up again!
If possible you should do the gliding shots for sure – it would obviously offer opportunities for shots that would be impossible to get otherwise.
Yea, the shots would probably be awesome. We asked Uzi if we could take a camera up there, and he said it might be difficult, but he would figure something out. He goes every other week, so this week he said we could go to the airfield and check things out, and then decide if one of us will go up.
re gliding. Some time ago I worked in a spectacle frame factory (where is this going – you may be thinking) – we did at one time produce security cameras which could be inserted in sunglasses and helmets – or wherever. For experimental purposes Uzi took one gliding and the film was quit reasonable. I could try finding it for you if you are interested – it must be around somewhere I would have thought.
I love the possibilities of getting great aerial shots….very cool.
tessa, I like the idea of gliding. It would be similar to you and kate parasailing. You survived that very well. Make sure you do not damage your camera during the flight!! I have always wanted to go gliding. up, up and away!!!