from Jill Tweedie: “Amateur Photography”

Task 1: Vocabulary Gapfill

1. clickings infestation locusts myriad

In a few short weeks the camera seasons begins. Loaded down with film and filters and huge black boxes, the first of hordes of tourists will start to flood across the world, an ____________ of _________ that give out a _________ of dry ____________ as they land. Smile, click. Say cheese, click. Keep still, click.

2. shoved aside anachronistic lens vacuumed Instamatic step aside focussing bide their time black-ringed take it for granted peculiar wrench unleash

All travel is now merely a way of moving a camera from place to place, all travellers are ruled by the all-powerful __________. Visitors old-fashioned enough to wish only to stand and look with their _________________ eyes are ______________ by the photographers who __________________ that while they do their ritual ______________ nothing else may move or cross their vision. Those _____________ souls without a camera must ________________ for those more properly occupied, must wait while the ritual take place, and must _____________________ while whole coaches stop and ______________ upon the landscape the _________________ God. And the populations of whole countries see themselves cannibalised, swallowed up, ________________ into the _________________ eye, ______________ what they can from the cannibals. You want take picture me? You pay. You want picture my camel, my house? You pay.

3. accomplished captured under cover

None of this would matter, perhaps if anything worthwhile was being _________________. If all the constant busyness and clicking produced, at its end what had not existed before, images of beauty ______________ or truth told, then who could complain? But, sadly, this isn't so. The camera is simply graffiti made respectable. Nice people do not cut their initials on walls any more. Nice people aim their lenses, and prove in that way the same old human message: Kilroy Was Here.

The camera is the means by which we stamp ourselves on everything we see, _______________ of recording the Wonders of the Worlds already wonderfully recorded by professionals and on sale at every corner bookshop and newsagent. But what use to us an illustrated book of perfect photographs? What use to show Aunt Maud back home, postcards of the Taj Mahal, the Coliseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Tuscan landscape since we are not in the picture to prove that we were there?

4. blank temple shrink stretch of rocks verity grinning domesticate appropriate leaning against

No ____________________ has _____________ unless I am within it. No monument exists but for my wife, _________________ it. No building is real if it does not contain my husband at its door. No __________ is of interest without my face beside it, ____________. With my camera I _______________ everything beautiful, possess it, _______________ it and _____________ it and reproduce it on my ______________ sitting room wall to prove to a selected audience, my friends and family the one absolutely vital fact about the beauties: I saw them, I was there, I photographed them and ergo, they are.

5. smirking bosoms arouse immense emerged cliched

Even this_______________ egomania might be forgivable if some truth, some meaning ______________, albeit in the background behind the _________________ faces. But most amateur photographers show no interest in the world as it is, only in the world as it ideally should be. For tourists it is the world as _______________ as tourist brochures, calculated to _______________ envy in the _______________ of the stay-at-homes.

6. squeal spike hoot minarets pounces infinitesimal overwhelming surge haunts mosque

Thus all photographs of all famous tourists sights must, for a start, eliminate their one ___________________ ingredient - other tourists. Patiently the photographer waits while the crowds _______________ round about and ______________, clicks in the one _________________ second when his target is clear of all others but Gladys. So Aunt Maud at home sees a peaceful idyll, far from the _________________ of any human but Gladys. And lies are often more deliberate than that. You wish to show that you have been to places ancient, untouched, quite outside the stream of ordinary tourism, quite outside the stream of modern life. You want a picture of a real Morocco - a scene as old as time. Unfortunately for you, a glassy modern building edges up to the _____________, behind the _______________ the television aerials _______________ the sky, beside the camels two Moroccans in unsuitable western suits stand discussing business, and all around the cars ____________ and _____________.

7. obliterated twist aerials retain exclude shift summit

So you must stand and _____________ your camera, hold it up sideways. ____________ your position so that the little yellow lines just clear the building, just cut out the ______________ and the telegraph wires, just ___________ the businessmen and their cars while _______________ the rest. And when all these alien elements have, for a precious moment; been _______________, click. There, Aunt Maud, the real Morocco! The Morocco nobody who has actually been there will ever actually see. That is the ____________ of the amateur photographer's art - total unreality. The World As It Isn't, and our Fred.

Travel with camera wonderfully narrows the mind.

Task 2: Vocabulary revision:

Find in the text:

• Nouns denoting holy buildings:

__________________________________________

• Adjectives denoting size:

__________________________________________

• Phrasal verbs of movement:

__________________________________________

• Verbs of facial expressions:

_____________________________________________

• Verbs describing noises:

_____________________________________________

• A word which you really like:

_____________________________________________

Task 3: Comprehension Check

Answer the following questions:

1. Which words from the first paragraph emphasise the volume of tourist traffic? (1)

2. What does the writer suggest comparing the tourists to locusts? (1)

3. Why is camera described as `all-powerful lens'? (2)

4. What is implied about the amateur photographer's attitude to those without cameras? (2)

5. What is suggested by the phrase `their ritual focussing'? (2)

6. Explain in your own words how native people `wrench what they can from the cannibals'? (2)

7. What is the main purpose of the holiday photographs, according to the writer? (3)

8. What does the author suggest about the photographs when using the words: ` shrink and domesticate'? (4)

9. What fundamental rule applies to photographing famous tourist sites, according to the writer? (6)

10. Why are the Moroccans' Western suits described as `unsuitable'? (7)

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