SOME “SHOOTING!”

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 13335, 23 December 1943, Page 2

SOME “SHOOTING!”

U.S. SOLDIERS IN BRITAIN NINE THOUSAND SNAPSHOTS A DAY London. Just about the most ardent bunch of amateur photographers in the world right now must be the American soldiers in Britain. They’re shooting snapshots at the remorseless rate of 9,000 a day.

Not 900 a day or 9,000 a week, but 9,000 a day. Nine thousand times a day or thereabouts some fellow stands up against some scenery while his pal clicks the shutter. It’s possible to nail the number down exactly, because all the pictures have to go throtigh a perspix 1 - ing little knot of U.S. Army censors, who have to make sure the G.I. lenses didn’t take in any scenery helpful to the enemy. All negatives go from the camera to the Army Pictorial Service in London, which develops them and makes one print of each picture, free, passing the results on through the long-suffffering censors before the picture-snappers can send them home or do .anything else with them. “Long-suffering” censors is the word, because the quartet of khakiclad officers striving to dispose of this tide of photography report that practically all of the pictures are the same thing —a guy against some scenery—and practically all are down to the usual novice standard, which isn’t so good.