Tuesday, July 28, 2009


I love my granddaughter Rebecca but I have begun to realize in the last few months that more Rebeccas would never be better. If I had two Rebeccas, it would not be twice as good. It is human nature to contrast and compare. And this I have been doing every time Rebecca and her younger sister Lauren knock on the door on Saturdays. Consider that Rebecca has always eaten what is put in front of her while Lauren has a been a fussy eater since birth. She is much better now (she smells everything before daring to try it) but there is no way she will eat a Mexican tostada the way most anybody would eat it. You put the tostada in front of her which in my house is a fried tortilla with chopped meat topped with raw onions, tomato and shredded lettuce. Lauren will immediately separate all the parts carefully with her fork and eats each separately. This infuriated me on Saturday until her mother, Hilary pointed out that Lauren had gone a long way from the little girl that ate nothing. Hilary did not have to remind me that Lauren had inherited from a close relative. It was Hilary who as a very little girl cried and then had a tantrum in the dining room of the venerable St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. A waiter in a tuxedo came to us and said, "Is there anything I can do to help the young lady?" It was my wife who answered, "Yes, if you can find her some beans and tortillas."

It is these differences between Rebecca and Lauren that make the whole experience of having two girl granddaugthers that much more enyoyable.

Today I passed by Rebecca's and invited her to have a bubble tea. Rebecca instructed me to say, "Two fresh honeydew, not powder, no milk, slush and with bubbles." She then showed me how to shake the concoction and how to pierce the top of the paper cup with an oversized straw that had a cutting angle on one side. It seems that we both share a fondness for tapioca which is what the little softly chewy pearls at the bottom of the cup are. I was about to tell Rebecca that they reminded me of sheep testicles but then I changed my mind. Age seems to be mellowing me.

We walked back and Rebecca went outside to tend to her roses and remove some of the not so fresh leaves of her hostas. I then saw Lauren scooting past in her bike with her new pink front basket. It was a delight to see her stop and hear her say, "Holá, papi."

It was a delight to notice and glory at their differences.

Monday, July 27, 2009


Yesterday, fairly sure of myself I wrote this and today after reviewing my slides of Rebecca I might just eat that hat. There is one that almost compares to that iconic (for me) portrait of Rebecca by the agave at the MacMillan Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park. Why did I fail? I have several almost certain theories.

For one the iconic portrait was a grab shot. It was a shot I saw. I saw it and checked my light meter. The exposure was 1/30 at f-2. Without a tripod that's a bit iffy. I was using a 35mm wide angle and with that lens you can get away with that 1/30 second shutter speed if you press the camera to your forehead while pressing the shutter. The look of that picture has all to do with being close to your subject with a wide angle.



This time around I decided to take a tripod so I could use slightly smaller lens openings and go for my sharpness. Not only are these picture not that much sharper but they also don't have the look of the 35mm wide angle. I opted for the

very sweet Nikon F-1.4 50mm lens. That was a mistake. I

had to pull back and somehow I
pulled back more and my picture almost looks wider than the one with the 35mm wide angle. I also should have known better than to shoot on a sunny day. The contrast inside was strong in spite of the light filtering through the trees and the almost opaque plastic of the domed ceiling. I had taken the original day on a cloudy winter afternoon. Contrast was kinder and it opened up Rebecca's eyes and gave them that milky look I find so arresting. I guess I shall return.


If there is any saving grace in my project to repeat a favourite photograph it is that this time around I was almost saved by a smile, Lauren's smile.

Sunday, July 26, 2009






It was sometime around 1948 and I was 6. We had moved from Martinez to Coghlan which was closer to Belgrano where my mother taught and closer downtown to the Buenos Aires Herald where my father worked as a journalist. The moving must have involved wooden crates as we had an open one in the galpón (a shed with a metal roof) in the back of the house. With some extra boards, a broom stick and a few bricks I made a car. I don’t remember what the steering wheel was but the bricks rested on other bricks on an incline so that each pair represented the gas pedal, the clutch and the brakes. For a while (my memory is not exact on this) that wooden crate was a real car. I drove the car and I was Juan Manuel Fangio the great Argentine driving champion. One day the car reverted to the crate it really was and no matter how hard I tried to use my imagination the crate was a crate. It would seem, as I look back now, that imagination and magic are killed, little by little (or suddenly as it was in my case), by growing up.

Not too long after a magician came to our school. I remember him pulling out of his throat a long string of Gillette razors. I suspect that children of my age then, would now be looking to see if they could figure out how the trick was performed. For me it was real. It was real magic, no different from what I was learning at catechism (I was getting ready to do my First Communion) where I marveled at Christ walking on water and changing water into the best wine.

For many years my medium format (6x7cm) Mamiya RB-67 has been my Sword Excalibur. I honestly believe that with it in my hand I can take very good photographs because the camera is special. I have three of them but I keep using only one. The others are for backup and or for spare parts if Sword Excalibur where to be broken beyond apparent repair. My Mamiya contains all kind of (almost) foolproof devices that prevent me pressing the shutter if the film back has no film. I can instantly change to colour or b+w film because my Mamiya has multiple backs. I own five of them.

I purchased my Mamiya sometime around 1979 and I showed it to Rick Staehling who was the art director of Vancouver Magazine. He looked at me as if I were crazy. I didn’t blame him. In comparison to other cameras of the time like the 35mm SLRs and even the 6x6 Hasselblads my Mamiya looked like a camera on steroids. It is its very heft that has made my relationship with it to grow in time to the point that I now believe that I cannot possibly take a bad photograph if I give the Mamiya all my effort and imagination.

But that Mamiya has a few shortcomings which I will argue, up and down, are the reason it is such a good piece of equipment. I have to think of every photo I take because its 120 format means I will only get 10 pictures. Film is expensive so I am extra careful. This has meant that through the years I have developed a photo/Scottish mentality of making sure everything is to my satisfaction before I press the shutter.

It is a big and heavy camera that more often than not has to be tethered to a studio light system. I need to check the light with a flash meter. I have to be fussy and fuss around. This does not mean that when I have to I cannot set up that camera and one light in under three minutes and take the picture of a busy actor or politician in the allotted 8, 9 or 10 minutes!

Where the Mamiya seems to fail (and I am not all that sure about that!) is in its inability to shoot quickly, from the hip (as they say) and capture moments with an extemporaneous quality that smaller cameras are good at.

Much has been said and written about Henri Cartier-Bresson’s dictum that one must wait for the decisive moment to happen and to be ready for it. I believe to the contrary. I believe that decisive moments can be hurried along by the photographer. A case in point, I explained it here where I rang the bell at a door and ran back in wait of the person who would open it. I use this principle in most of the photography that I do. But I will admit that when things happen (wonderful unexpected things) I do my best to notice them most of the time! Sometimes I can photograph them or I simply set it up. It many not be all that extemporaneous but it will do for me.

Switching from my Mamiya to any of my Nikons or Pentaxes must feel (to those who own guns) like letting go of the AK-47 and picking up a .22 caliber pistol. I feel like those Nikons and Pentaxes are toys. And treating them like toys I tend to take many pictures that seem eminently forgettable. One of the reasons is that these cameras almost feel alien to me. I don't use them much.

Thanks to my interest in taking pictures of my granddaughters (the hate it when I suggest we go to my studio to take some portraits with the Mamiya or I carry out the lights to the garden) I have been using my two Nikon FM-2s and one Nikon FM with some sporadic success. They are compact and light and I have a whole gamut of lenses but I seem to use mostly the moderate wide angle 35mm lens. Because I tend to use ISO 100 Ektachrome or Plus-X in b+w I find myself using maximum lens openings and slowish shutters speeds like 1/30 second. The pictures are pleasant but often they have their technical flaws. Sword Excalibur provides me with pictures that to my eye have few if any technical flaws. I guess one has to get used to the trade-off and accept that candid pictures can have charm.

There is one picture that is not in the least candid. I posed Rebecca and had her move up and down (ever so slightly) and then swing her face from left to right (ever so slightly). I instructed her to look at the camera with a cold seriousness. She rose to that request and provided me with this photo that I repeat here. I took it at the MacMillan Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park when she was 7. I love how it looks like it may have been taken in Mexico with the beautiful blue agave behind her. I love the no-nonsense look of her little button-down blouse.




I will freely admit here that I used Photoshop to lighten the sparkles in her eyes. I am not the purist that some people might think I am. For me this is the most perfect photograph of Rebecca that I have ever taken and when I look at it I grieve in that I may not take a picture like that again.

As a photographer who harps about creating decisive moments I have a better chance of taking a picture like that since I don’t have to wait for it to happen.

That brings me to the meat of today’s blog. I decided on Friday and told Rosemary that we were going to return to the MacMillan Bloedel Conservatory on Saturday and take pictures of Rebecca and Lauren by the agave. I took two cameras. One was a Nikon FM-2 loades with Ektachrome 100G (my favourite colour slide and transparency film). I took another camera. It is a camera I have not used in many years. It is an extremely heavy Nikon F-3 with an attached motor drive. In its heyday it was a serious peace of photographic equipment. Thinking of my 20s I loaded it with Kodak Tri-X.

Rebecca tried to thwart me every step of the way yesterday. She absolutely refused to wear a beautiful dark blue Mexican dress that her mother wore a few times at about her age. There was lots of shouting, “I hate dresses! I will not wear it, it’s too big for me and I cannot bend over as my breasts will show!” In the end with a bit of pleading and logic she relented and wore it. I found a little top from Oaxaca for Lauren in our Mexican trunk.

When Rebecca stared at my camera yesterday she would watch my shutter finger. As soon as she saw me about to press she would give me a wishy washy smile. Many exposures were ruined. I told her to stop it. She didn’t. I then covered my right hand shutter finger with my left hand and that was the end of it!

I have come to change my mind a bit about my Mamiya Sword Excalibur. Perhaps that beautiful no-nonsense-I-mean-business Nikon F-3 does have some of its qualities. It is not too late in my photographic career to discover it and perhaps even profit from it. As I held that Nikon F-3 I felt a bit of magic. It was exciting. No, I wasn't driving that car/crate. I had not gone back that far in time. But I was feeling that electrical pulse going through me. I was taking pictures again just like I had done those many years ago. The weight in my hand, the decidedly loudish (a most expensive sounding sound) motor drive. I was in control of the decisive
moment.

"Tune in" here to see the results in a few days.

Saturday, July 25, 2009



I have never really liked smelly cheeses even though I cannot live without cheeses in general and I do adore some strong ones. It is all my mother’s fault. In Buenos Aires I remember that her favourite spread for her morning toast was “queso tipo Roquefort”. Even then she would point out to me that this was a very good Argentine imitation of her favourite cheese from the Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. She sometimes combined it with jamón crudo as Argentines (at least then they were sticklers in not stepping on the toes of some of their European cousin’s patents) called Prosciutto di Parma. While I can blame my mother for ruining my possible enjoyment of smelly cheeses she did instill in me the idea that breakfast was a most important meal.

It was my grandmother who further taught me that breakfast was supposed to also be fun. She would smile as she would dip her toast (slathered with butter, strawberry jam and peanut butter) into her very sweet café con leche. Breakfast was never breakfast without her sweets.

For many years in Vancouver breakfast was a sit down affair at the dining room table. It became difficult to coordinate one breakfast with our different schedules and our two daughters’ schools. But we managed.

Nineteen years ago it all changed when my friend Mark Budgen suggested that instead of spending money and gas trying to secure the NY Times at a newsstand that it would be better if I obtained a daily delivered subscription. There was an enterprising Korean gentleman who would drive every day from the US border and deliver the paper in most of the lower mainland. He retired in Shaughnessy and the business of delivering the paper was taken over by the Globe & Mail.

Breakfast, with some few exceptions has been in bed since. Rosemary and I roughly alternate the days one of us goes down to prepare breakfast at around 6:30. My grandmother would not smile and my mother would have found it odd that I would have the previous evening’s cold pizza for breakfast. Pizza for breakfast is a rare occurrence but about 10 years ago we would often have bacon on Sundays.

It is simple now. Rosemary drinks decaf and on a few days of the week I make her cream of wheat with brown sugar. Of late, my roses have been happy with her as they share her bananas's potassium. Rosemary eats the inside with brown sugar and I cut up the peels and sprinkle them around my roses which grow all that much better.

My breakfast is a very large mug of very strong tea (made from loose tea in a large ball) a glass of juice (V-8 or apple, Rosemary likes grapefruit) and two Venice Bakery scissor rolls that I bake in the oven until they are very dark.



I don’t spread that tipo Roquefort on my bread but like my mother I enjoy those morning papers (the other one is the Vancouver Sun). And so does Rosemary. It seems that the day has not really begun until we silently (we never talk at breakfast) have our breakfast in bed and read our papers. Both of us follow the exploits of Rex Morgan.


A pomelo & queso tipo Roquefort

Friday, July 24, 2009





My city has changed a lot since I first got to explore it in 1975. I was working for Tilden Rent a Car on Alberni Street. Before I was “promoted” to counter clerk I washed cars and jockeyed them to other Tilden locations includign the one at the airport. I had never driven automatic cars so my first experience with rental cars at Tilden was that I drove them with the right foot on the gas and the left foot on the brake. This did not work well and the car would jerk around. Nobody bothered to correct me. I guess they thought I drove like that. Eventually I caught on that one used only one foot.

It was driving to the airport that I discovered the few shortcuts that a city can have when it is a grid of north/south and east/west streets. Those shortcuts can be diagonals like Kinsgsway (impossible now with all those traffic lights) or Puget. Fir and Hemlock are shortcuts at certain times of the day when one wants to avoid “the little old ladies” that cross Granville as one of my buddy car jockeys used to comment. But on Sunday Granville is an easier way as Hemlock allows parking so only one lane each way is in operation. And we knew not to speed on the Arthur Laing Bridge. It was a Federal jurisdiction and tickets were much more expensive. It was at that time that learned to open any locked car in under three minutes with a coat hanger wire. Renters constantly lost keys or locked them inside.

Ultimately it was my knowledge of back alleys and how to avoid bad traffic intersections that allowed me on any given day to get to places more quickly (yet driving at the speed limit) than most people. Once, none of that helped except for that back alley savvy. Rosemary’s Audi 5000 (the one that was supposed to accelerate all on its own) would not do so even with my help. I found myself stranded on Cambie and 7th Avenue. I managed to get home (41st and Granville) by driving the Audi through most of the back alleys that I knew, in reverse gear, which was the only operational gear of the Audi’s automatic transmission which had given up the ghost.



And there was another time when I arrived late to a party. It was around 1980 and when going to town and specifically to West Van or North Van I used to take a shortcut which avoided the congested afternoon traffic to the North Shore. This was the road that hugged the waterfront and began in Gas Town and and paralleled the CP Rail tracks and ended on Georgia, right before Stanley Park. The road no longer exists now as it is all high rises and is traffic calmed. But back in 1980 taxi drivers knew the trick. There were a few speed bumps one had to be careful and every once in a while a train would block the way.

What blocked my way for close to an hour was not a train but the loading of British battle tanks (Chieftains) that had arrived to our harbour in a British Navy freighter. They were being loaded on to flat cars and railed to the Canadian Forces Base at Shiloh, Manitoba. NATO and particularly the German Army liked to have maneuvers in Shilo as the terrain imitated the plains of the Ukraine which is where the world thought WWIII might have to be fought.



It was a few weeks ago that driving to the Shaw Tower (I was going to be interviewed by Fanny Kiefer in her Studio 4 TV) where I almost could not recognize where I was. There were no landmarks left of the old road. The CP barge was long gone as were the railroad tracks. I could not even discern the ghosts of those tanks that had made me fume about arriving late to that party. I am only glad that I did have a camera so that the fading memory of those Leopard tanks (they weren’t Leopard tanks) that crossed my path 29 years is a memory of actual events. I remember telling my host, “I am late because some Leopards crossed my path.” Alas, they were Chieftans and if Kinsgsway is impossible now, Puget is a shortcut that still works just fine.

Thursday, July 23, 2009


Without knowing anything about this new David Austin English Rose I bought it and planted it in the centre rose bed. I knew it had rugosa parentage and this meant that the rose would be tough, floriferous and disease-free. Because I put it into the ground in early spring it did not bloom normally as it would have if I had planted it the year before. It has made up for lost time by blooming right now in big clusters of beautifully droopy almost messy clusters. The scent is intense and unique (read below). I go to the garden and smell my roses and I cannot figure out why more people do not do this. Why is it that they have also not discovered the wonders of the Fantastic period of music as the music of the 17th century is sometimes called? Or why is it that more people do not collect, as I do, as many versions of Gerry Mulligan playing My Funny Valentine? I guess the enjoyment is more intense simply because it is a lonely one.

Shropshire rose grower, David Austin has this to say about Rosa 'Wild Edric':


This is an unusually tough and reliable rose that will thrive even under difficult conditions and is not only suitable for the border, but it is ideal for semi-wild planting or for hedges. Its flowers start as attractively pointed, purple-pink buds. They gradually open to a semi-double flower of deep velvety pink with shades of purple and mauve, exposing a bunch of golden-yellow stamens that contrast with the colour of the petals. The overall fragrance is strong and delicious but interestingly, with a little investigation, a marked difference between the fragrance of the petals and the stamens can be detected. The latter is pure clove, whereas the former is classic Old Rose with hints of watercress and cucumber.
Wild Edric was a Saxon Lord in Shropshire, who was said to have married a fairy Queen. He reproached her one day and she disappeared. Legend has it that his ghost is still be to seen searching for her in the hills. 4 ft. x 4 ft. (1.2 m x 1.m).

The Wikipedia has this to say about Wild Edric and it seems that it can also be written Eadric:

Eadric the Wild or Eadric Silvaticus was a leader of English resistance to the Norman Conquest, active in western Mercia, 1068-70.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009


Today I went to my second GVPTA Advocacy Committee meeting. I am not a member of the GVPTA (Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance) but I was an interested observer. All the different branches of the arts community in Vancouver, be they theatre, dance, music, opera and the visual arts are suffering from the combined blows of the economic downturn and the retreat of conventional media to the lifestyle topics of food, health and style. The GVPTA Advocacy Committee is attempting to address the problem and to find a solution.

A well known news anchor at the Corporation told me that arts coverage is below their indicated spectrum of activity. My gracious and keen friend of the arts, Paul Grant will be history by the end of July at the CBC. The taking of the package at the Corporation precludes a de facto disappearance of the position held by the person retiring. Until the folks at that Corporation can figure out a new name for arts coverage or in a method to circumvent the prohibition of bringing it back, we will not have any.

It was three months ago that I went to see a brilliant play at a well known theatre company’s venue. It was a Thursday opening. I noticed that our city newspaper’s critic was not there. I later found out that the critic had broken a leg. There was no review on the Saturday paper and this, I suspect, adversely affected attendance and the company must have lost money. A Wednesday review was too late to save the day.

I pondered on how the fortunes of a theatre company depended on that one review. To be fair, a competing weekly paper, while being published on a Thursday (too late to review a play for the Saturday), does post reviews, as they are written, on its web page. But as I see it, with the fading of radio arts coverage (can Jian Ghomeshi be the one-size-fits-all arts reporter?) and the consideration that the making of tofu burritos and doing yoga while gardening on a bed of daisies is covering the arts in a newspaper, our local arts organizations have to find another way of making what they do known to the public.

I called a local and very importan marketing manager of a Vancouver arts organizaton and I pressed to him my idea of something that I would call (in a most preliminary manner) a Vancouver Arts Web Hub. He was enthusiastic and immediately suggested that the key for its success would lie in a central core with a paid and independent editor, who would hire writers to write credible criticism, previews and essays on the arts.

To make a very long story short we had a preliminary meeting and a steering committee is being put together. So far we have (I am the independent observer) Charles Campbell (former editor of the Georgia Straight, books editor of the Tyee, arts editor and opinion page editor for the Vancouver Sun), Amir Ali Alibhai (artist and Executive Director of the Alliance For Arts And Culture) and Nini Baird (as far as I know the only American woman to have received the Order of Canada and a powerful promoter of the arts). There are a few others who will join. The first mandate is to obtain funding as the complexity of a web site that would also incorporate all the participating web sites of Lower Mainland arts organization) will require money. The plan is to launch the site (a soft launch seems a realistic one) in the spring.

Charles Campbell will probably be the independent editor suggested by the marketing manager I cited above. Max Wyman has informed me that he would be a keen contributor in writing for the Vancouver Arts Web Hub. I have in mind essays that would attempt to lure classical ballet enthusiasts to try modern dance or essays that would explain the importance of acting in opera or, why baroque music is not that much different from new music of the 21st century. It is my feeling that arts coverage should include more than previews and reviews.

As an example I made the conscious choice of taking my 11 year old granddaughter to see the Playhouse presentation of the Electric Theatre Company’s Studies in Motion- The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge. It had full nudity which didn’t bother Rebecca in the least. She is now enthusiastic about theatre. I exposed her to her first Shakespeare play, The Comedy of Errors. She now wants to go to more Shakespeare. It will probably not be Othello but All’s Well That Ends Well.

I have always felt that the media had the obligation in helping us become aware of the benefits of living a life surrounded by all the arts of which we have so many in Vancouver. And they rarely show us ways of inducing our younger ones to accompany us.

Simon Ogden at today’s GVPTA Advocacy Committeee Meeting astounded us by telling us that in the Canadian theatrical community Vancouver is seen as cutting edge! Who would have known? We who live here do not understand the richness of our art scene. I read in the NY Times the constant reviews of classical ballet danced by imported dancers from Russia. I compare that to the variety of dance we have in Vancouver and I do believe we have the richer one.

Charles Campbell published our proposed mandate in the blog of the Alliance for Arts and Culture here. I am quite excited at the prospect of having what in reality will be a Vancouver on line arts magazine that will incorporate also the finest arts blogs in town like Plank Magazine and Simon Ogden’s The Next Stage.

The boy with the violin in the picture above is one of the first pictures I took of violinist Corey Cerovsek when he was 14.