International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

Four The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER May, 1934 With Camera and Compass in the Caribbean By Lewis H. and Helen L. Davis {Contributed by Karl A. Barleben, Jr.) EATHERY casuarina trees bowing gently to the warm trade winds, a dazzling white beach edged with emerald green water, endless acres of deep blue sea ending against the paler blue of tropic skies. Magic islands sloping from indigo seas to be adorned with the geometry of yellow-green sugar cane fields and then lost in cloud. Rippling muscles of sweating blacks glistening in the sun as they row huge sugar-laden lighters from shore to ship, the silver streak of a flying fish against the indescribable blue of tropic seas. After six months of sailing through the West Indies, such memories become a part of you. And they become the more a part of you if you have sailed your own boat a couple of thousand miles to get them. Leave New York on a chill November day, ride out a five-day gale off Cape Hatteras, sail two thousand miles without seeing land, and you are ready to drink deeply of the exotic beauty of these islands. At least that is the way we found it to be. Perhaps a thirty-seven foot boat {The Seal) is a small one for such a trip. Perhaps two men and one woman is a small crew. And perhaps twenty-five hundred miles is a long way to go, but now that our cruise is ended we know that every hardship and danger of our trip had a large part in preparing us for our initiation into the mysteries of the islands which Columbus named. There are those who have made trips to interesting foreign lands and have returned nursing the regret that they had no good photographs to augment their memories. Fortunately, we are not of that unhappy group, for we have several hundred good negatives to help carry us back to warm tropic waters and mystic green islands. It might have been otherwise. Almost baffled by the unending expense and time necessary to fit a boat for a deep sea trip, we were tempted to slight our photographic equipment. Fortunately, we decided against this course and in the end, carried a camera and accessory equipment which would insure something besides memories. We took with us a Leica camera fitted with an Elmar f :3.5, 50 mm. ns, twenty-five rolls of orthochromatic and a quantity of panchromatic film. In view of the necessity of developing films soon after exposure in the tropics, as well as the questionable efficiency of the film service in the islands we hoped to visit, we took a Leica developing tank, thermometer, and chemicals for mixing our own solutions. Before sailing, we had a chemist measure out the proper quantity of each chemical necessary to our standard solution, put each in a test tube and scratched the glass at the proper level. We then labeled each tube with a strip of adhesive tape and marked it with India ink. Knowing how full each test tube must be for the correct weight of a given chemical, we did away with the need of scales which should have been ruined by the salt air and dampness. We sacrificed a precious portion of our water-proof lockers for our materials, and fortunately, for on several occasions the contents of these lockers were the only reasonably dry articles in The Seal's cabin. A week after leaving New York we had our first and last bad experience in an unique field of photography. When two hundred miles to the east of Cape Hatteras we ran into what we egotistically call "our gale." For five days and five nights, mountains of seas battered our little ship, tearing to bits one of our sails and smashing the small boat we carried on deck. For several days and nights we feared our hatches might also be smashed. Had they broken in, it would have mattered little what else was smashed. On the morning of the fourth day we peered through the port-holes to watch a huge, wallowing tanker come close by to us to see if we wished to desert. Even if we had been willing to take further risks in our ship we could not by any stretch of the imagination see how we could have gotten to the deck of the tanker. We decided against abandoing ship and signalled our message as best we could. Just how we managed to get some twenty pictures of our would-be rescuer as she rose and plunged in those seas we do not know. The great difficulty was not the risks taken in getting the snaps — it was simply in getting ourselves to try. We didn't want to. Why? Perhaps we felt that it would be futile to make snaps which might never be developed. Perhaps it was that if we did eventually survive these endless days and nights of raging seas we would not care to have a photographic reminder of the forces that threatened our lives. Or perhaps it was merely because of the utter unappropriateness of thinking of pictures when we were being forced to decide a question which might be one of life or death. At any rate, we got out the Leica. The tanker was standing by two hundred yards away. After a sea had thundered across us, we would open the hatch and try to get a shot before the next sea came. Sometimes we miscalculated and the reeling cabin was soaked once more. Sometimes we would emerge for a picture only to find that our subject was completely hidden by a towering sea. We managed, however, to get an entire roll of pictures. The possibility of making rapid exposures with our Leica and the impossibility of getting double exposures was largely responsible for our success. After twenty minutes the tanker left us to our fate. Perhaps the captain felt that, if we were foolish enough to make pictures at such a time, we might be lucky enough to get through alive. From Jacksonville, Florida, we took a twenty-five hundred mile hop to Barbados, British West Indies. Twenty-seven days of glorious sailing. For two weeks we sped to the eastward and for two more we journey southward. There was a week of the "Horst Latitude" when we lazed along through long swells before gentle winds. Sometimes the sea was so smooth we experimented with time-exposures in the cabin, or climbed to the masthead for vertical pictures. There was another week of trade winds when we alternately tried to photograph the dolphins as they sped past us and to harpoon them. Our evenings were often devoted to developing the day's "shots." The helmsman was generally the developer — one hand on the tiller, eyes on the lantern-lighted compass card, and the other shaking the developing tank. When both hands are needed for changing solutions, the foot on the tiller will do as well as the hand. Hease mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.