They Even Bet On It!

Last month, looking for a cover picture for "Photo News" which would make Gisborne look like the bustling city it is, Wilton Smith dusted off his largest telephoto lens, climbed laboriously into the clock tower, and innocently shot the noonday scene looking down Gladstone Road towards the harbour. The issue hadn't been on sale an hour before the telephone started ringing. To cur surprise, people just wouldn't believe their own eyes.

Where, they asked, was the picture taken from? How was it taken? Was it Gladstone Road? Was it Gisborne? Why did it look so jumbled up? Was it two pictures in one? If indeed it was Gladstone Road, what had we done with the bridge? And so on, ad infinitum.

People who had lived in Gisborne for 40 years rang and said the old home town had never looked like this. Some rang at meal hours, accused us of ruining their digestion, and said the argument round the table had grown so heated that only the truth would restore peace and quiet. One man told us he had put £5 on a bet that the picture was taken from the clock tower, (it was, and he won).

Here at "Photo News", of course, we were bent almost double with mortification at all the trouble we had caused. So for those who didn't inquire, here, belatedly, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The picture was a portion of a quarter-plate negative shot from the clock tower with a 12-in. telephoto lens, on Friday, 7th August, at noon. Sides of the print were trimmed off to make an upright picture, and the bottom was trimmed off to the Bright Street pedestrian crossing. If readers turn to Page 23 of the same issue they will find a similar picture, taken with an ordinary lens. If, with strips of paper, they will then mask out all but the appropriate portion at top centre of this picture, they will discover a small but exact (except for the traffic) reproduction of the cover picture.