It was in August of 2013 that my Rosemary told me, “Alex
you cannot keep bribing the folks at the Buenos Aires and Mexico City airports
not to X-Ray your film. Get a digital
camera now!” I obeyed her and went to Leo’s on Granville and Jeff Gin sold me a
Fuji X-E. A few years later I bought an X-E3.
As a photographer the above changed me. I do shoot
film both in 35mm and in 120 with my Mamiya RB-67. I define shooting with film
with one word – uncertainty. Knowing what you just shot with a digital camera
does have its advantages. This is most evident when I use slow shutters to
photograph dance.
At my age of 84 I believe I am still fit as I bike for
an hour with my 3-speed non electric bicycle. I stop in one place, at the end
of Musqueam View Street when it dead ends on Point Grey Road, and take a
photograph with my Fuji X-E3 of the same view of Vancouver and North Vancouver. I purposely underexpose it one or
two stops to make the ever present clouds (one of the charms of this city) more
dramatic. Sometimes I take wide or extra wide panoramics. This is a feature of
my Fuji not found in more expensive Nikons and Canons.
These three panoramics, two taken at the beach on
Pacific Blvd are glorious and when I confront these views and I am dazzled, I am
instantly thankful of Rosemary who
brought us from Mexico City in 1975. She must have known something about the
present situation down south. She said, “Alex we cannot go to the US because
there you are an alien. We are going to Vancouver.”
What did that smart and beautiful woman see in me? I
believe she recognized my future talent in photography before I did.