Coincidences happen more often than not, is something I have known since I was in my early 20s. I don’t know where I first read it. People might know of the word serendipity but few would know the antonym coined by Scottish writer William Boyd in his novel Armadillo – Zemblanity.

Sometime around the end of 2018 when I went to Leo’s on Granville Street, counter clerk and friend Jeff Gin showed me something called a Lensbaby. He said it was defective and he would sell it to me for a song. The next year, 2019, in February Rosemary and I travelled to Venice and Florence. While walking on St. Mark’s Square I dropped the Lensbaby. It was crooked but I kept using it with my Fuji X-E3 digital camera.

Two days ago I became curious about those Venice Lensbaby photographs as Jeff Gin gifted me a complete set of new Lensbaby and attachments.

I looked for Venice in my Fuji digital files in my computer. Alas! There were none. I kept at it and found Italy – Florence 01, etc and Italy-Venice. And there was Italy-Venice-Lensbaby!

I “fixed” a few and printed them. In my opinion they are fantastic.

The bittersweet element here is that Rosemary never got to see them. No coincidences for her. It’s pure zemblanity.