Wednesday, September 24, 2008



Monday at City Hall I was introduced to a tall handsome man who smiled with his eyes. He looked familiar. He commented on my Arca Swiss ball tripod head (it cost me $600 some 20 years ago!). "I have one of those and I mount my Canon DSLR on it," he told me.

Sometime in early 1989 Peter Ladner called me up and came to my house. He wanted me to take the initial photographs for his new magazine venture called Business in Vancouver. This lasted for 6 months until they decided they could no longer afford my rates. The tabloid size paper was going to be a weekly and the original design was by designer Rick Staehling. Staehling stipulated colour pictures on the cover. Once the paper was established, art director Randy Pearsall was to take over. Since this was the pre-digital age in some cases I shot with what then was ultimate cutting edge technology, Polaroid Instant Colour Slide film. I had a manual processor and after taking the pictures I would process them on the spot and run to BIV (as Business in Vancouver came to be known). When the assignments had more lead time I used medium format transparency Ektachrome film.



The tall City Hall man said he was Graham Clarke and that he was the CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority. He then told me (his memory being better than mine) you have taken my picture."

This morning I investigated and found Ektachromes of Graham Clarke next to a vessel called the Britannia. I then remembered that sometime in the late 80s he was involved with a company called Harbour Ferries now called Harbour Cruises. The files were marked Business in Vancouver under his name. The vessel is the MV Britannia.

I called BIV today and found that Randy Pearsall, is still the art director and still has a full head of red hair. But he confessed to me, "I no longer drive strange French cars." I remember him driving a shocking lime green Renault Le Car! I asked him about Graham Clarke. "Alex I just happen to have some early copies of BIV here and here he is, October 2, 1989."



In my files I found two neatly handwritten instructions(by Randy Pearsall) with two masked transparencies of Clarke. In pre digital age transparencies were not scanned but went through a process called colour separation. Here they are. And below a scan of my useful and somewhat used Arca Swiss tripod head that started all this.

Addendum:
name: Randy

comments: I don't want to take up your time on the phone again, but
you mentioned I still have a full head of red hair. Sorry to
say it's only red on the edges leading to grey and then very
thin on top.

Take care Alex