On Friday I had lunch with two friends. One was the very good writer John Lekich, the other was a sharp mined beautiful woman, Nicole Scriabin.

I would have first seen her in St. Petersburg but I have never been there.

When I was struggling to write anything for magazines, newspapers and ultimately these blogs, it was Lekich who advised me to finish whatever I was writing with a citation found in the beginning paragraph. That has served well in all these years.

It was Scriabin who taught me to admire a sort of shy but gracious beauty. She greatly increased my business of photographing city lawyers who would demand that I bring Scriabin again as the person to do makeup.

Both Scriabin and my wife share one very important story in that I first met them by seeing them from their rear quarters.

In Mexico I saw my Rosemary leaving a school where I was teaching. She had long and straight blonde hair to almost her waist. She was wearing a miniskirt and her legs were astounding. Not too many months later we were married.

At a CAPIC (Canadian Association of Photographers and illustrators in Communication I was sitting on the front row of photographer Rick Etckin’s studio. In front of me was a woman in a short and extremely tight skirt. Her legs were like my Rosemary's and somehow it was all put together in such a way that her black flat shoes added to my enjoyment. Because this was back in the 20^th century I did not feel in the least guilty.

Sitting with Scriabin and Lekich in a lovely and intimate Italian restaurant in Trafalgar and 16^th Avenue I was trying to adapt to the protocol of this century. Do you tell a woman who is past 50 that she is beautiful? Is it important to tell her?

Lekich is the kind of gentleman (in the 21^st century we men can call other men gentlemen but ladies are now always women) who wears that little white handkerchief where it belongs and would never attach a bow tie (one that he would tie himself) to a button-down shirt. He is a gracious man who is obviously a product of that past century where we both came from.

As a photographer, a portrait photographer who invariably will buy the post card and not photograph the landscape, the cityscape or a sunset, my interest lies in people. These are people that invariably are more interesting than they seem and obviously more beautiful than that first impression. It all happens when you intrude on them slowly and sometimes by trick. Invariably people will show you what they want you to see in them. The photographer with some experience can pry more on the sly.

As an about-to-be-77-year-old man, I am long past the mid-life crisis and that young redhead in that red Miata. I have been married to my Rosemary for 51 years and I love her and like her exactly as she is now. Neither of us is in our mid 20s.

As I have gotten older my interest in taking photographs of women has also been in the direction of women who are closer to my age. The perfect 20-year-old on a desert island would induce me to feed myself to the sharks. The idea of Rosemary and her husband on that island would mean that we would learn quickly to enjoy coconuts. Sharks would not interest me.

For years as I watched my lovely roses and my Rosemary’s perennials lose their spring freshness and summer over-the-top beauty. I began to appreciate that fall decay.

Imagine me going to a 40, or 50, or 60 year-old woman and telling her, “I want to photograph you in the decay of your beauty that so reminds me of my collapsing hostas, and drooping Gallicas.” The slap would be instant.

And yet in spite of the rise of a genuine equality between sexes (and sexes not, the neutral one and the neither nors) old men photographed with dramatic lighting will result in portraits of men with character.

If you do this to other sexes, including those of the female (womin if you prefer) it is considered character assassination. Why?

The Scriabin I first saw from the rear and subsequently from the front had luminous white skin. The Scriabin at the restaurant had freckles! Could I convince her that I love freckles? Would I insult her if I told her, “If I were 40 I would want to be in the middle of nowhere with you where I would count all your freckles, one by one?

If I had the accreditation and the access that a good magazine would give me and the art director would say, “We want you to photograph interior designer Nicole Scriabin for next month’s issue,” I would have justification.

Do I have any justification otherwise? I would not want to consult Lekich on this as his confusion would not be any different from mine.

The only person who would give both of us an avenue of justification is a Swedish actress we both met a long time ago called Viveca Lindfors.

Taking a cue from the advice of John Lekich ( although not from that first paragraph) , I must state here that our lunch gathering has put me into a post-mid-life crisis of sorts. And consider that Scriabin does not have red hair. 

That beautiful woman does have freckles.

Beauty in fall decay 

How frail a lovely semblance is 
Vanitas Vanitatum

For anybody who might object or question the apparent fuzziness of the Scriabin photograph read here for my justification.