Mike's Saudi (13) RSAF photography 1976

 

“I used to teach a group of Royal Saudi Air Force personnel photography in the good old days before the digital camera had arrived. I was very lucky in that my boys seemed to take an interest in the subject unlike many other trades."

 One of the problems for the photographers was that their job on the flight line was simple and repetitive. Just a case of changing the film magazines in the aircraft after every trip and processing the film, essential but not very challenging (this was well before digital photography). To my way of thinking my boys might be required at any moment to take still photographs of a defective part for identification, a crashed aircraft or a visiting dignitary so I set up a training program to teach them ground photography. I was perhaps better qualified to teach this as I had taught similar subjects while I was in the RAF.

By this time Ali Badi and I had become good friends and I respected his advice so I put this idea to him and he advised me that we should put it to the Security Officer boss of the Photo Section for his approval. So along we went to see him, I wanted the boys to photograph the station fire engine for a starter exercise “Ah no” said the officer “You see Mr. Mike everything on the base is secret and must not be photographed but there is a fire engine down town which is exactly the same as ours why don’t you use that one”. He honestly wanted to help us so the three of us sat down over a cup of coffee and eventually came up with a compromise, we could photograph items on the base as long as we gave him all the prints and negatives to destroy. Ali and I were delighted we could now start a photographic course and use the fine array of cameras that so far had laid in a cupboard unused; nobody had ever asked before.

This later paid off when the King visited Khamis and Ali took the Rolleiflex out to record his visit. He did a good job and proved that he was much more than a flight line magazine changer. The prints were much admired and I got a little of the kudos for training him so did the Security Officer who was also our boss and Ali had proved to himself that he was a photographer. It also stirred the other boys into action for a while. So in a way we won all round and Ali was keen as mustard.