Monday, November 14, 2011



One always thinks about what might have been if one…The fact is that we live the life we chose within the limitations (that few of us know) of what we think is free will.





I often wonder what may have been of my life if Rosemary and I had sold our house in Arboledas, Estado de México as soon as we put it on the market. We had quit our jobs teaching and we were ready to move with our two daughters, seen here, to Vancouver. The house did not sell. It was 1974. To make ends meet I decided to make my hobby of photography help us pay while we sold. I was equipped with a clunky 35mm Pentacon F and a slightly better Pentax S-3. I had four lenses, a 120mm, an 85mm, a 50mm and a 28mm. I used Kodak Tri-X. I had a little darkroom in the bathroom of our garage/shop. Rosemary helped me get clients which ended up being wealthy Mexican families with children. Before I knew it I was making very good money. Nobody was doing then what is now called environmental portraiture. The photo studio was king in Mexico. By word of mouth I was getting many clients while suffering the travails of poor availability of photographic paper and the fact that I had to dry mount the photographs on board using a common clothes iron.




My friends in the neighborhood told me that fate was holding me back in Mexico and that I should stay and make my fortune there. But we had made our decision. We sold and we left for Vancouver.

I do believe that a year of taking those portraits in Mexico prepared me well for what I was going to eventually do which is to photograph people for magazines.




In yesterday’s blog there are some pictures of my oldest daughter Alexandra. I took them on our way to a wedding on Bowen Island. Here are three pictures of my younger daughter Hilary who was 11. Unlike the more tomboyish Ale, Hilary liked white, frilly dresses> I don’t remember where we got the butterfly net but we used it as a prop.



Thanks to my scanner I can now enjoy these pictures. Not again as the first time around I may have only looked at them under a loupe and decided to print a few at a future date. Then I got busy…

Again I must point out the special quality of the sadly gone Kodak Technical Pan film.