In my long interest in portraiture I have photographed beautiful people and ugly people. The ugly have been in a minority as I have always wanted to photograph beauty and to show it.

Of late I have noticed that the stock of Victoria’s Secret has plummeted. The reason being given is that the company has yet to adapt to the fact that a woman’s concept of beauty is now distancing itself from red underwear and wanting to look like a model strutting on a fashion ramp.

My idea of attractive never drifts much from the idea that when in doubt, silk, satin, pearls and fishnets will do the trick for this old man.

I have a nasty streak which I enjoy playing with the man who cuts my hair (is the word style now a word of that past century?). He is always talking about lovely ladies. I keep telling him that he must avoid both words and simply say “beautiful woman.” And then I further warn him to not even attempt to use the word “girl” ever unless he is talking about the ones that sell cookies.

So in spite of my ripe 76 years I believe that I have progressed with the concepts of this century and the rules of political correctness.

In these many years that I have photographed beautiful women the one in this blog is one whom, alas, I have no recollection of her name. After 1980 I had the good habit of writing a name and a date on my envelope filing system for negatives.

She was the friend of a handsome man we called “Black Jim” as he was indeed quite black. I met them on Wreck Beach so I never did get their surnames. Surnames were not usually exchanged on the beach.

I took many photographs of her, experimenting with a style I had yet to get and an approach I had yet to nail down. I remember that she asked me to take some photographs of her with clothes on in my studio.

At the time I had been rebuffed by the Fashion Editor of Vancouver Magazine who had told me that I had a future in portraiture but not in fashion. “You simply have no attitude for fashion,” he told me.