According to Wikipedia, “Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule.”

A couple of weeks ago I was reading a thread on one of the forums and reached out to a fellow traveler with a technical question about the Focomat 2C. He quickly got back to me and after a few private messages we shared email addresses and subsequently agreed to a Zoom. What a wonderful time I had! My new friend lives in the UK … and how about this … he happens to know my other photo buddy I recently met who also lives in the UK … and they live near each other and hang out together!!!  I had a follow up Zoom with my other friend in the UK and we’ve decided to all get together virtually in the near future. Sometimes the Internet can be a force for good!

My new friend invited me to attend a Zoom meeting of an informal group of photographers known as Zen. Very deep for sure. Actually, they’re named after a café in Vancouver, British Columbia where a few of them started to get together every week to kibbitz. They expanded to the US, UK and elsewhere, so now they meet weekly online!  On Friday I attended their meeting. Turns out I knew one of the members, Tom Abrahamsson’s wife Tuulikke of Rapidwinder and Softie fame, through phone calls, emails, and back and forth communications through this site. And how about this for a second time … another Canadian member of Zen had sold his Focomat IC enlarger to a broker in the US, who in turn sold it to me. Based on a few introductory remarks I made, he somehow guessed I was the one who bought it!! Damn!!

So, go figure … what’s the likelihood of all this? Six degrees of separation for sure!! As the song says it’s a small, small world after all, but I think it’s a small, small photographic world after all!! At least it seems to be for me these days. I’ve met some great people I would have never found and  have broadened my photographic horizons. I couldn’t be happier!!

Happy Holidays and my best wishes to you and yours.

Stay well,

Michael