In my beginnings as a magazine photographer in Vancouver I had to be accurate to a point. I always had to consider that if my pictures ended up as covers,  on a full vertical page ( bleeds they were called) or on a two-page spread I had to make sure that the line between pages, called the gutter, did not go through someone’s face. Cover photos had to have room up top for the magazine logo and the bottom corner for those new-fangled scan boxes. Both sides of the photograph be they a portrait or soemthing else had to be less busy so that copy could be put in.

To minimize art director cropping of my images I relied on my Mamiya RB-67 which shot both vertical and horizontal shots on a 6x7cm format that fit better into the pages of the magazines of the era.

By the mid 80s I had developed a new method of shooting. I did everything with a full-frame crop and then I would print these negatives (be they b+w or colour negative) with an enlarger negative carrier that I had personally filed with a metal file. This resulted in photographs with what is now called a crazy border. But then the technique meant two things:

1. The photographer was presenting a picture that was cropped in camera.

2. The photographer had personally printed the photograph as no two crazy borders are ever identical. A crazy border was a photographer’s finger print and part of the personal style of that photographer.

I have written all the above here.

But the reason for this blog is that a photographer can never stay static in a style or modus operandi. A photographer has to progress and move on even if it means moving on from the tried and true.

I have as an example today’s image here. One of them is filed edge crop in the camera photograph of a woman (a Polish banker) wearing fishnets. The other is of a psychiatric nurse wearing fishnets.



The image that I have cropped is part of a larger negative taken with a Nikon FM-2, a 50mm lens and loaded with Kodak b+w Infrared Film. I have cropped it so that it can meet with my self-censorship. It is also cropped in a way that the resulting image will fly the robotic censors of social media.

What I find interesting is that this crop makes the photograph unusually erotic.

Guest Blog
Arts Umbrella Senior Dance Company dancer Ria Girard

This is my third year participating in the choreographic mentorship with Crystal Pite and it has consistently been one of the most pivotal periods of each year. Of course, part of it is receiving guidance and insight from one of today’s world-renowned choreographers. But it is also an incredible way to unite each class. There is no better way to build a team than creating art together, and putting on your own show.

Last year I was one of the choreographers, and since then I have gained a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who puts themselves in that position. A choreographer is probably the most vulnerable person in a studio. Trying to articulate your imagination to a full room of people (in this case your own peers) can be paralyzing. Never mind the logistics of the actual physicality - as Crystal once said during our rehearsals “It is amazing what dancers can do in my head!”.

This dilemma calls for a tremendous amount of encouragement, respect, and trust in one another. It is crucial that as dancers we support the choreographer's creativity; it is a time when we forget about judgement and be inspired by each other. When seeing the beauty and depth that has evolved over the past few months in our peers’ work, we learn to respect anyone who is choreographing - regardless of their years of experience or what kind of relationship we have with them. Through this experience we learn how to communicate and understand each other on such a profound level. The trust that is developed in each other as dancers, choreographers, and artists in general elevates both our work and our companionship.

Nora and I, after a wonderful afternoon at the Recoleta Cemetery, boarded our train of the Línea Ferrocarril San Martín at Retiro Station. We found a seat and this is a rare situation as the train is usually quite full. In front of us was a man in uniform. He was very serious and perhaps more so because of his moustache. I spotted a little wing button on his dark blue jacket. I mulled this in my mind. 

As soon as we were underway I decided to satisfy my curiosity and ask him a few questions. My first one was “What rank are you?” I was most surprised when he answered, “Soy comodoro,” as this is equivalent to Colonel. I had never seen such a high ranking officer on a train before.

Since the 70s with all the terrible military governments that “disappeared” people into oblivion, and the mess that the Falklands war was for the country, the military presence on the street is just about invisible. Between 1985 and 1995 President Carlos Menem abolished conscription so you do not see uniformed sailors or soldiers anywhere.

My guess is that the Commodore was headed for the station of El Palomar outside Buenos Aires, in the Province of Buenos Aires. There is a Argentine Air Force Base there.

After my questions Commodore A. Wissler smiled at me and said, “¡Un Comodoro en el tren!” From that point we chatted for close to 40 minutes. We talked about the Argentine Air Force. He told me he had been a young boy in a poor family in the state of Jujuy. The only way he could get a good education was to join the armed forces. He told me he was an electronic engineer based downtown but that he had purchased a little house not far from the Palomar Air Base.

We talked about the beautiful (obsolete, still the principal fighter of the Argentine Airforce, but with advanced avionics installed in Texas) of the A4Ar ( Lockheed Martin A-4AR Fightinghawk). This peaked my interest.

In the mid 60s when I was a conscript of the Argentine Navy but seconded to the office of the Senior US Naval Advisor, Captain USN Onofrio Salvia, I had to translate from English into Spanish the maintenance and operating manuals of recently purchased A-4 Sykhawks. I became most familiar as I was given a tour of the then almost new airplanes and shown the cockpit so I could translate stuff.

During the Falklands War I remember watching on TV here in Vancouver a horizon in which an A-4 (of the Argentine Air Force as both the navy and the airforce had the same plane) was streaking from left to right. In the middle of the screen it puffed and exploded. I was most upset (and I have to admit not too much so about the professional air force pilot in control) about the loss of an airplane that I considered mine!

Such was the intricacy and intimacy of our conversation that other passengers contributed and the whole rail car was listening.

When he got off at El Palomar I realized how quickly the time had run and soon after Nora Patrich and I arrived at the Bella Vista Station.

The words are weltschmerz, ennui and enervation. I can add a fourth one from my Argentine Spanish fiaca (to feel like doing nothing). This latter word from the Argentine lunfardo may have a connection with the lazy Sicilian town of Sciacca which Andrea Camilleri has changed to Fiacca in his Inspector Montalbano series of novels which I adore.

Such is this level of cerebral thought that one marvels when watching five or six young men stomp their feet in obvious incoordination with the shifting of their heads two-and-fro, when Arty points out, “Start with your feet not with your head. Then once you have that, the head will come along.” And so it was as I watched.