My architect friend Abraham Rogatnick who died some 7 years ago used to tell me,”I am not long for this world and I am glad of it.” I understood then and more so now.

Consider that my Microsoft Word program  questions the use of the work Ektachrome. More than half of the cars that I could at once recognize with but a glance are gone. When I look at the celebrities in my NY Times or even the Vancouver Sun I have no idea who they are.

While I cannot brag that I used to walk miles to my school when I was a little boy, whatever else I might want to brag about  (since it will be pre-digital revolution) will be of no importance.

As that not-too-polite English young man in a photography class I gave some years ago said to me, “Can you show us photographs of people in magazines that still exist?”

So when two intrepid photographers (and you have to be intrepid to be one these days), Robert Kwong and Ralph Rinke called me up to ask me if I could be visited, I jumped at the offer. They were here yesterday and for three hours my Vancouver isolation in things photographic dissipated. Over Spanish Alhambra Beer we talked of things that nobody these days would understand. Such as HC-110, Dektol, Technical Pan and, on and on.

Bless these two from saving me for at least three hours.

So here you have some lousy snow pictures that I took today. Can I justify them?

I think I can.

My Rosemary and I are on our way to Venice next week. I am participating in this group show. My wife has been there before. Millions have been there. Soon it will be millions & one when I show up. How can I possibly take pictures with some sort of originality?

Jeff Gin at Leo’s Camera contributed (at a very good price) part of a LensBaby that has different black disks with from small to large size f-stop openings.  I chose the almost wide open f-2.8 disc. I took pictures of the scene outside our Kerrisdale house today featuring our 2017 Chevrolet Cruze. I believe that these pictures are indeed lousy but they show that perhaps the f-4 disc might be a better bet to take some “dreamy” shots of Venice with the Fuji X-E1. With the Fuji X-E3 I will be using its panoramic stitching capability and in particular for vertical panoramics.

But I am taking two more cameras that use film. One is a Japanese swivel lens panoramic called a Widelux which I will load with 160 ISO Kodak colour negative film. The other camera (as seen here) is a Russian Horizont swivel lens panoramic. The deep red filter seen in the middle is an indication that I will be loading it with the long discontinued and most wonderful Kodak B+W Infrared Film.

I have been reading John Ruskins’s The Stones of Venice, Charles  Dickens’s book on his trip to Italy, Henry James’s Italian Hours and Gore Vidal’s Vidal in Venice. My idea is to illustrate evocative passages in those books with my photographs.




What the Dickens? 

There is a wonder in me when I locate a moment in time (taken perhaps at 1/30 of a second) of an event I have no memory of but the photograph reveals that it did happen. In circa 1981 when this photograph was taken photography was a trusted medium. It was so.

It is amazing to note that the quaint office with the living room type of lamp and rattan furniture could have been one in which the best magazine this city ever had was put together. I can see on the bottom right my open and very heavy photo bag. Because it was so heavy and I carried it on my right shoulder I am suffering the consequences now of a having a bad right knee.

Those were the days of dreaming. You might have an idea in the middle of the night. You might then have gone to Vancouver Magazine and passed Mac’s open door with a, “I have an idea…” and then perhaps a month later the idea made it on the cover.

I wish I could dream again. But I can at least certify that all the people of the photograph (I have no memory who might have taken it) are alive and well.