Courtenay - Mamiya RB colour - Mamiya RB b+w - Fuji X-E3 - iPhone 3G

My good friend, architect Abraham Rogatnick told me a year before he died, “I am not long for this world and I am glad for it.”

Because I am a product of an era that had black dial phones that I always answered when they rang, I am feeling that I do not belong now in this century. A century where people post (the word has lost its magical meaning that involved licking a stamp) photographs in something called social media with no comment or reason, or even worse wish long dead people a happy birthday. And if they happen to

Rogatnick kept busy with many projects. One involved convincing the powers that be that the Vancouver Art Gallery should stay where it is. He died because he had advanced prostate cancer.

I don’t have that concern yet so I keep busy taking photographs and exchanging caricias with my cats. My daughter Hilary calls me every day and manages to visit me once a week. My other daughter while far in Lillooet calls me too.

While I am mostly in a melancholic mood, I do pride myself in pushing the boundaries of photographic possibilities.

What you see here I call (a boring epithet, but it will do) hybrid photography. By this I mean that I have incorporated in a session machinations that would have been impossible in the era of black dial phones.

My subject, Courtenay was close to the gray wall of my small Kits studio. On one side I had what is called a beauty dish light (I did not use the flash, only its built in modeling light or hot light).

In front of her I placed my iPhone3G (has no SIM card) pointed at her. In front of the iPhone I had my Mamiya RB-67 medium format camera. It was focused on the iPhone screen. I had two film backs one with fast colour negative film and the other with b+w film.

The piece de résistance became my Fuji X-E3. I used it to photograph what I saw through the Mamiya viewfinder.

Perhaps the results (results that satisfy community standards) are not quite as good as I thought they would be. But with time in our hands we can go for another session.