This past Sunday was the last time my youngest granddaughter Lauren performed in a program of the Arts Umbrella Dance Company. It was at the Vancouver Playhouse. Both my Rosemary and I are saddened by the fact that she is abandoning dance at almost age 17. She had been at it since age 7.

For me there is an added bitterness. With no more media credibility (I no longer work for any magazine or newspaper) my only justification at going to these performances was to photograph Lauren and on the sly (I have a camera that makes no noise and that has no visible light display) take pictures of the rest of the dancers with my favourite technique of using very slow shutter speeds.

It was a nice ride while it lasted. Then there is the idea that in our recent trip to Italy I took over 700 pictures inside renaissance churches. Thinking now about that I wonder why I took them. They will never see the light of day. Would I have been better off sitting (as Rosemary did) at a pew and absorbing the view without my camera?

Why then take so many pictures of dancers?

Perhaps because they were there.