Alexandra Norris - Nikon FM-2 with Kodak Tri-X - New Scan 10 May 2026

 Alexandra Norris's fine essay on posing nude

A Felicitous Occasion 

The emptiness of living with two cats, getting next to now phone calls and seeing my youngest daughter, at the most, every week and a half, finds me working in the garden, removing the black spot leaves from my roses, scanning my plants and writing my daily blog. This daily blog sometimes is one I may write three times. I have all that leisure time to do it.

Today I was thinking of a class I used to teach at a very good photographic school  (now closed) called Focal Point. It was on 10^th Ave close to UBC. One of my most popular classes was called The Contemporary Portrait Nude. I taught it beginning in 2010 for a couple of years until the school closed.

In one of those classes we had a model that was especially lovely, alert and intelligent. She wrote for me her experience of posing nude for the first time. I will place here (above) two blogs involving her.

Because I was the teacher I rarely took photographs. I did not have a digital camera. With Norris I managed to take some photographs with a Nikon FM-2 and with what soon was to become my favourite digital camera that I use to this day in company with my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3. That fave was and is my iPhoneR3G. It has not had a SIM card for years. I keep it charged at all times as I like to use it lots. Better and newer phones cannot compare to what I can do with the iPhone3G.

I will place here some of those that would not offend those offensive “community standards”.

One revelation that find outstanding is that I have gone again to the photographs on her file in my computer with the use of my 22 year-old Photoshop-8 using a technique I was not aware of in 2010. I open the photograph and immediately go from RGB to LAB in Photoshop. With Lab, any correction I may do with contrast or shadow detail, does not affect the colour. I will place here a photo I took with my Fuji X-E3 of that most important tool in my Photoshop with which I am able to bring out (the detail is always there and is not invented) that all important shadow detail. What I am unable to fix well was the iPhone3G’s inability to handle extreme contrast so the highlights cannot be brought down well.

 

November 1994

Jann of the Ardent Heart 01

Jann of the Ardent Heart 02 
 

My mother, grandmother, my Rosemary and I were all teachers. Once you have taught it is difficult to stop. I am 83 and I believe that I have useful information (at least related to photography and portrait photography) that I would like to impart. But few in this 21^st century, where Rembrandt lighting has disappeared and phones are ubiquitous, seem to be interested.

Perhaps someone reading this just might be interested in why 8x10 glossy photographs were the rage back in that other century.

This can be explained easily with these initials BS and AS. BS stands for scanners (be they flatbed or those non-plus-ultra drum scanners). AS stands for After Scanners.

In that now remote century when newspapers, magazines and photography books or illustrated books were paramount to information and culture, blacks could not be properly reproduced, particularly in newspapers. These publications demanded glossy 8x10 photographs. I can remember my finickity photograph drum drier. The output would feature photographs that had spots, etc. The cure for this was awfully complicated. And so Ilford Photo in England came up with the idea of plastic coated photographic paper. When I used it I applied slight pressure on the wet photograph with a car windshield wiper. I finished it off with a hair dryer.

Once the scanner came into the equation, scanners could reproduce true blacks for publications. It was at about that time that some of us figured out that Ilfospeed Photographic Paper was not archival. Even in files with no light the prints, in spite of having been properly fixed developed a yellow cast full of spots.

And this guy, noticed that some of them were beautiful. They were so amazingly lovely that I have been scanning these prints and printing them as inkjets with archival paper.

An example I am awfully proud of is this 8x10 (not glossy!) of Jann Arden.

Vancouver - 10 May 2026

 

Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' 10 May 2026

When Rosemary and I married in the lovely neighbourhood of Coyoacán on 8 February 1967 we were not quite ready to adjust to a married life in Mexico City. My mother helped us get a little house in Arboledas, Estado de Mexico. It was there where we were faced with situations I had never encountered before.

Such was the atmospheric pollution of greater Mexico City that clouds were never white they were yellowish. When it rained the sulphur dioxide in the air mixed with the water to produce sulphurous acid. This meant that I usually watered my car so that the rain water would not corrode the car paint.

Once a year I would remove the gasoline tank of my WV Beetle and I would clean the gunk inside with paint thinner. Even though I had installed an extra gasoline filter in my car, that sludge managed to get through.

Such was the bumper tailgating of traffic in the Periférico Freeway that I installed a switch in my car that would turn on my brake lights without my pressing the brakes.

When I went to my teaching position at the Jesuit University Universidad Iberoamericana I was stopped once a year by the same policeman who with a smile would say, “ Profesor Alex you were … I will have to give you a ticket.” So I would bribe him.

All the above disappeared like magic when Rosemary brought us (our two daughters) to Vancouver in 1975.

Thanks to Rosemary I was able to live a financially good life in photography and I learned to garden.

But best of all (in a way) when I go on my daily bike rides to Jericho Beach I stop at West Point Grey Road park to take the same photograph of the cityscape and I glory at all those clouds that do not have a hint of yellow. I tell my Mexico friends my delight in being able to drink our tap water.

And here (and again thanks to Rosemary) is today’s scan of one of her favourite roses, the English Rose Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’. The bloom is 5 inches wide and extremely fragrant.

My grandmother until she died in 1970 was my mentor. She educated me as my mother was busy teaching in high schools to make ends meet. Abuelita often quoted the refrains of Sancho Panza giving advice to Don Quijote. To this day when a situation arises, some sort of conflict, I remember her advice.

Today I noticed that a large branch of Rosa ‘William Lobb’ with about 14 unopened buds had broken off in my back lane garden. I felt terrible until I realized that here I had an opportunity to scan something I would have been reluctant to do before.

My grandmother would have said, “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” The equivalent in English is “Every cloud has a silver lining. Literally it means, “Bad things happen for good reasons.”

What is particularly lovely of the scan is that you can discern well what a moss rose is all about.

 More about moss roses and Lobb's Clitoria 

Niño 9 May 2026

They saw me coming at my local vet. Even though Niño has lymphatic cancer of the intestines and is 15 years old and was just fine with me giving him a human cancer pill every other day I was told that he needed to have his teeth cleaned. For the procedure he was put to sleep. He is now on his way to perhaps dying in a month or two. He refuses to eat much and is very thin. He lies with me on the bed all day and is very lovable. He and his sister Niña give me the human warmth I had with Rosemary when she was alive. Rosemary and I got the two cats at our SPCA 7 years ago. They are a direct connection to Rosemary.

Six minutes before Rosemary died she asked, “Am I dying?” I was not able to answer. And now with the eventual death of Niño death has been in my mind even though I have many distractions like the garden, my blogs, my photography and my plant scans.

A great majority of my school friends, family, writers I worked with, etc are all dead.

My friend Alan Jacques on 9 July of last year texted me in the morning. He wrote, "Dying is untidy. Alex, thank you for being my friend." He had terrible Parkinson's and he died via MAID on that afternoon. My longtime friend (we met in 1977) saxophonist Gavin Walker died at about the same time. 

I believe that the death of a cat is foreboding preparation for one’s own death. With the world situation as it is now, I cannot forget what my architect friend Abraham Rogatnick (85) told me three months before he died, “I am not long for this world and I am glad.”

Epicurus lightly wrote that there is no pain in the actual moment of death and so one must not fear it. I do not quite agree. The Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin concept of the survival of the fittest is important. Darwin said that we humans do our best to keep our own personal species going. We want our genes to continue. Because of this it is perhaps impossible to think about not being alive, not feeling, not seeing and not thinking. It is against our genes.

I try to think about not being alive and I cannot do it. It is plainly evident why the English speaking Ástor Piazzola who was raised as a kid in New York City wrote his lovely composition Oblivion. There is not translation into Spanish. The closest is “olvido” or “to forget”. It is interesting to me that in English nothingness is a close synonym to oblivion. Nada is not nothingness.

While I will not reveal my religious beliefs I can assert that both Rosemary and I believed we would never meet again. Epicurus may have been right that dying is not to be feared. In my view what is to be feared is the anticipation of it. My constant memories of my Rosemary will be gone. Just before dying, the thought of  that is painful.