Alexandra Norris - Nikon FM-2 with Kodak Tri-X - New Scan 10 May 2026

 Alexandra Norris's fine essay on posing nude

A Felicitous Occasion 

The emptiness of living with two cats, getting next to now phone calls and seeing my youngest daughter, at the most, every week and a half, finds me working in the garden, removing the black spot leaves from my roses, scanning my plants and writing my daily blog. This daily blog sometimes is one I may write three times. I have all that leisure time to do it.

Today I was thinking of a class I used to teach at a very good photographic school  (now closed) called Focal Point. It was on 10^th Ave close to UBC. One of my most popular classes was called The Contemporary Portrait Nude. I taught it beginning in 2010 for a couple of years until the school closed.

In one of those classes we had a model that was especially lovely, alert and intelligent. She wrote for me her experience of posing nude for the first time. I will place here (above) two blogs involving her.

Because I was the teacher I rarely took photographs. I did not have a digital camera. With Norris I managed to take some photographs with a Nikon FM-2 and with what soon was to become my favourite digital camera that I use to this day in company with my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3. That fave was and is my iPhoneR3G. It has not had a SIM card for years. I keep it charged at all times as I like to use it lots. Better and newer phones cannot compare to what I can do with the iPhone3G.

I will place here some of those that would not offend those offensive “community standards”.

One revelation that find outstanding is that I have gone again to the photographs on her file in my computer with the use of my 22 year-old Photoshop-8 using a technique I was not aware of in 2010. I open the photograph and immediately go from RGB to LAB in Photoshop. With Lab, any correction I may do with contrast or shadow detail, does not affect the colour. I will place here a photo I took with my Fuji X-E3 of that most important tool in my Photoshop with which I am able to bring out (the detail is always there and is not invented) that all important shadow detail. What I am unable to fix well was the iPhone3G’s inability to handle extreme contrast so the highlights cannot be brought down well.