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| 20 August 2023 |
One thing is humility of the kind where the person blushes when overly praised.
I am not that kind of person because I accept that if I am a good photographer, little of it has to do with my personal talent. It has more to do of getting a good education (full in some cases of what could be seen by others as useless facts) and by having met many mentors who pushed and inspired me even when I did not want to budge.
For most of my years in Vancouver I dealt with art and
design directors who either inspired me or forced me to do stuff I did not want
to do. They were always right.
Splendid art director Chris Dahl (Vancouver Magazine & Equity) was my best pusher/mentor in Vancouver. One day he called me and said, “Alex I want you to shoot some city scapes for me. I want you to use your swivel lens panoramic Widelux and to jiggle it as you use it.” I reluctantly did as told and the result (see below) is one of the many cityscapes I am most proud of. Are they good photographs because I am a good photographer? No. They are good photographs because I followed directions.
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For many years I shot portraits of dancers and I was reluctant to photograph one in a studio up in the air in frozen motion. I preferred to shoot dancers dancing in performances. Soon I was using slow shutter speeds and getting what I called whirls.
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Whirls
I am now extremely happy to report that thanks to Béatrice Larrivée who danced yesterday and on Saturday I have taken some photographs that are sending me in an exciting direction I had no idea existed.
Béatrice Larrivée VII
Because I photographed her Saturday show, when I returned
yesterday with my granddaughter Lauren, I had an idea of what I was going to
see and I could anticipate those moves and positions. So I took chances. That paid off.
Béatrice Larrivée's show to me was modern dance gone beyond what most would define as modern dance. I would call it theatre with movement. Why theatre? Because Larrivée and her dancing partner Noa Lee Ashkenazi showed passion, sorrow and emotion while dancing.
What I saw for the second time and while editing today the pictures with my 19 year old Photoshop 8, I have come to a new personal world of my photography in which I just pressed the shutter but the two dancers on the Arts Umbrella Dance Company theatre stage did the necessary pushing in my brain.
Thank you two.
