President

The President

The President here is the President of the Republic of Estonia, Dr. Arnold Rüütel. In the autumn of 2001 he made his first state visit to Finland. During the visit he also visited the University of Turku and held a lecture there. This image was taken then, under the suspicious eyes of the presidential bodyguards.

The image was taken with my trusty Leica M6 with f:4/135 mm Elmar-M lens. The available light was quite poor so I had to use my Vivitar 283 flash - a classic combination. The exposure - with Fujichrome Sensia 100 - was the flash sync speed 1/50th of a second and full aperture f:4. Because of the long distance to the president the power of the flash was moderate and the available light has some effect, the lighting is not as hard as one might expect with direct flash.

Compared with the heavy AF cameras of the press photographers and their big flashes my Leica outfit looked small and quite ancient - and so it was, too.

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