In God's Presence

What a week it's been. The first church attack in KL happened the night before the McCurry workshop which was incidentally held at the Islamic Arts Museum. Across the road from the National Mosque. On a Friday.

FRU were on super standby.

Rumours of people smashing car windows with crosses on them were rife but I refused to take my kid's old kindy car sticker (with the giant cross) down in spite of the frantic phone calls. Why should I? Anyway, my car was untouched even though it was left unattended for pretty much the whole afternoon so thank you [insert god's name here].

Had a quick chat with Steve McCurry ("If there's any religion I'd subscribe to, it would be Buddhism") during lunch. Really nice guy. He's got a way of putting you at ease and even after a couple of minutes talking to him, it's not hard to see why everyone--Afghan rebel, religious fanatic and Skidrow junkie alike--lets him take a shot.

By the way, he paid a special visit to the McCurry restaurant in Jalan Ipoh... for obvious reasons.

The workshop started with a powerpoint presso and Steve welcomed questions in-between. If there's anything more humbling, it's being shown picture after brilliant picture with the man who took them standing right in front of you telling you how he doesn't believe much in retouching and colour filters (most of his pictures are barely retouched if not at all) recalling the amount of patience and persistence it took for that one shot, never taking no for an answer.

Took some pretty rubbish pictures during the quick 20 minutes of photo taking we had. Didn't show Steve any of those after that whole PP presentation!