A chiripada (derived from the word chiripa) is a stroke of
good luck, a favourable chance or an unexpected success obtained unplanned.
Not new in my blogs is an often repeated fact that the photographer that I am today (a good one I believe) has to do not only with all the pushy art directors that made me do stuff I did not want to do (but invariably they were right) are two persons. One was my wife Rosemary and the other Jeff Gin who worked at Leo’s Camera and is now the manager of Kerrisdale Cameras on Lonsdale in North Vancouver.
It was Rosemary who on August 16, 2013 told me, “Alex you
cannot keep bribing airport security in Buenos Aires and Mexico City not
to X-Ray your film. Buy a digital
camera now.” This I did with Jeff Gin at Leo’s who sold me a Fuji X-E1 and a
few years later I added an X-E3.
If I am able to use jpgs instead or RAW, it is because I
expose correctly. I am able to have correct colour with my digital photographs
as well with my scanned colour negatives and slides again because of Rosemary.
One Sunday many years ago around 1980 Rosemary said, “Alex you have been
complaining about not being able to print colour negatives in the darkroom. As
of tomorrow I have signed you up in a course at colour printing at Ampro Photo
Workshops on Broadway. Key to colour correcting is the awareness of that tricky
colour that is cyan and that many times
when photographs look yellowish it is not that they are too yellow but a
bit green, too.
On 30 November 2023 I attended a free Fuji Film workshop
organized by Jeff Gin. Its purpose was the introduction of a new version of the
Fuji GfX. They made available a little studio and two models. One was a male
the other was a woman. That is how I met the wonderful Hannah Parkhouse.
I took two photographs with my Fuji X-E3 and lucked out (una
chiripada in Mexican Spanish). Then she came to my small home studio. Because I
now have a 28 inch wide Acer monitor I have seen many good photographs of
Hannah Parkhouse that I missed.
The question is if I lucked out or I knew what I was doing.
I believe that it is the latter. I am 84 and I began to take photographs and
portraits in 1959. Am I right?
