Christmas, once you have purchased all the gifts and put up the Christmas tree (and we have done it) is when time stops. It is an interval for reflection.

For me 2017 was the year when I finally cut off myself (or was cut off) from all my possible photographic jobs. It is the year when it finally sunk in that I am (there is a bit of dark humour in this) obsolete – redundant & retired.

It was the year when I stopped making lists of all the stuff that once existed that is now long gone, including that early list of Studebakers, Edixas, Packards, Minoltas, Borgwards, Ricohs, Oldsmobile Achievas, Ektachrome, black dial telephones, travel agencies, journalists, editors, Pontiacs, Saturday Night, more than one big box bookstore, Sony Stores, Kodachrome,Duthies, cathode ray tube monitors to replace the one I have  when it finally calls it quits, my darkroom, our Athlone garden, our 2007 Malibu, my granddaughters as children, etc.

One bright spot is the fact that I am invited to the Georgia Straight Christmas party even though I no longer do any work for them. I went to the party this year and ran into about 10 people I knew of which only four were people I had worked with. Astoundingly what now seems to be a pleasant occasion is that I sit down to chat with Straight owner Dan McLeod who is particularly nice to me and even manages to converse in various monosyllables! Who would have known?

In this contemplative time I reconsider what I can do with the time I have left in collaboration with my many cameras and my now refurbished and dedicated (only a camera) iPhone3G.

Will I go out and shoot sunsets, cityscapes, fireworks, street photography, document fire plugs and telephone posts, take more than two pictures of my cat Casi-Casi per year, and photograph (and not scan) my roses?

No!

Will I pursue my interest in exploring my now more subtle (because I am an old man) look into what I think is erotic?

 Yes!

I will have to be careful as in trying to recruit possible candidates for this onerous task in this 2017 might be seen as harassment if I am too pushy.

As an example, and I rest my case, the accompanying photograph of this blog is one of Lisa Prentiss with that cliché that is the venetian blind reflection on the human body. I hope that in this coming 2018 I am able to snap many more like this one.

For anybody who might have a question about the photograph herein, it is exactly how I saw it through my viewfinder (Nikon FM-2) and I did not crop it.