As Ks go Krzysztof Kieslowski and Kokoro Dance would be pretty close in my files. But they are not because I have a separate file under D for Dance and that is where Kokoro Dance is.

And yet…

In my Thursday Vancouver Sun (yes I am subscribed to the daily as I want to know what is going on in my city) I read the interview between the Sun’s Shawn Conner and Kokoro Dance’s one half (the other being Barbara Bourget) Jay Hirabayashi.

To my amazement the two Ks are very close. You see the choreographic work Embryotrophic Cavatina (with Hirabayashi, Bourget, Billy Marchenski and Molly McDermott) that is to open this Wednesday at 8pm at the Roundhouse Performance Centre has as its music composer Sbigniew Preisner's orchestral work Requiem For My Friend. Preisner’s friend was Polish film director Kieslowski who died in 1998.

 Of late as the weather begins to cool and the prospect of another winter in front of me, it is hard not to be melancholy. It gets worse when I think of how many people I photographed who committed suicide. Today, coming back from a saxophone and cello concert in New Westminster my list of 9 grew to 10 when I remembered yet another one.

He had a sense of humour and instinctively knew what to say when I asked the right question.

Once at Rossini’s in Kitsilano,  a jazz joint he often played in I took my friend Patricia Hutter then one of the bassists at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I asked a question of Garner, knowing how he was going to answer.

“Linton,” I asked, “I understand you are from Pittsburgh. Who else is from there?”

His reply was the usual one, “There’s Roy Eldridge, Ahmad Jamal, Art Blakey, George Benson, Kenny Clarke, Stanley and Terry Turrentine, Ray Brown, Billy Strayhorn, Earl Hines, my brother Erroll, Billy Eckstine…””

When it seemed he was going to go on forever, I interrupted, “Who isn’t from  Pittsburgh? “ 

His answer was, “There’s J.J. Johnson, he’s from Indianapolis.”

Below is my corrected (sort of)  notes of my interview with Garner. They are fine, interesting but I am not quite sure if I want to smile.

In 1958 I bought my first camera, an Agfa Silette in a Washington DC pawnshop. I had traveled with some fellow St. Edward’s High School students on a chartered Greyhound bus. The first roll I shot with that camera was with Kodak Tri-X. I soon was flummoxed by the camera’s limitations as the lens could not be removed.

I saved up with odd jobs with Brother Hubert Koeppen and by 1959 I had a Pentacon-F Single Lens Reflex that I purchased for $100 from Olden Cameras in NY City. I remember that day when Brother Emmett, C.S.C. who ran the PX type shot at St. Ed’s indicated that there was a package for me. That was the day that I opened this glossy (very beautiful) box that contained that new-fangled SLR. In those days rangefinder cameras were the cameras to have.

Since that day sometime in 1959 I have had many cameras and I have kept juts about all of them. They are behind me on top of a couple of negative metal filing cabinets as I write this.

Just about a week ago it dawned me that my first digital camera (the only one I have ever had) my Fuji X-E1 is now 4 years old. As always my Rosemary was right when she insisted I modernize my ways back in 2013. This camera has been a Godsend.

With it I learned to shoot Arts Umbrella dancers with slow shutter speeds. I recently applied that technique with the circus/theatre performers of  the New Zealand troupe TheDust Palace at the Cultch’s York Theatre.

Rochelle Mangan - Goblin Markete - The Dust Palace

But I have been frustrated in that the camera is unable to focus quickly in the dark situation of a theatre. Anybody who shoots movement knows that in a peak movement that movement is zero. When a baseball batter hits the ball movement is zero. A camera’s slow shutter speed will freeze that motion.

For me motion is best reflected in a combination of freeze and blur. I use shutter speeds that range between ¼ of a second to 1/30^th. But it is almost impossible for me to anticipate peak movement (even when I do) m X-E1has a shutter lag as it attempts to focus in low light.

That problem will now be over as I have purchased (a black body in on order at Leo’s Camera on Granville) for the just out Fuji X-E3. Not only does this camera (which will use the two lenses I already have) focus more quickly it also has a silent (no click!) shutter.

I have a friend who believes in this digital age that a photograph taken with a vintage camera loaded with film is automatically art.

I am not sure I agree. What I do believe is that as technology progresses one must be aware of the process and to understand what came before.

Today marks the introduction of the iPhoneX (pronounced ten). Several essays on the subject maintain that with the advent of the iPhone the camera (as a stand along entity) is pretty well obsolete. This is because the recent iPhones are really good cameras with a phone included. For me since I appreciate the use of flash in a studio, until an iPhone can be mated to a studio flash, I would not consider using one.

My advanced Galaxy 5S may have a good camera but I have made it a point not to use and I haven’t even once! I would rather use my better Fuji-X-E1.

But in all the argument as to what is better nothing is being written on the fact that sharper, with brighter colours, with saturated colours do not in their own right make a photograph “better”.

Consider the definition of a well-made inkjet which has the artsy French name of giclée. Wikipedia informs us:

Giclée (/ʒiːˈkleɪ/ zhee-KLAY or /dʒiːˈkleɪ/) is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the late 1980s but has since come to mean any inkjet print. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to suggest high quality printing but since it is an unregulated word it has no associated warranty of quality.

In 2001 I photographed an excellent subject, Helen, who had a Japanese variation on how Audrey Hepburn would pose with gloves and a hat. The 5 picture display I called Odri. I used a medium format Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD with b+w film. I scanned the chosen exposures as colour negatives with my scanner for a sort of realistic skin colour result and then had them printed as tiny 2x3 inch giclées. In 2001 giclées had a look that was deemed inferior to photographs as you could see the individual dots of sprayed ink. What you see here is an enlarged to 8x10 version of the 2x3 original. If I were to try to do this today it would be impossible unless I could find a vintage machine.

I have written here and here on the surprising results with the use of an iPhone3G. Its limitations resulted in handsome results that were not accidental.

I am currently trying to figure out how to download photographs that I plan to take with that 3G now that it will not have internet (it will be only a camera!) and be able to use that damn iTunes.

Between 1807–1814 Napoleon’s Grand Armée fought Wellington’s, Portuguese and Spanish troops in what the English call the Peninsular Campaign. Between 1813 and 1814 the French army eventually widthdrew across the Pyrenees. Napoleon’s brother Joseph who had been installed as King of Spain made a quick exit and eventually ended up in New Jersey.

The Spaniards have a very long memory for stuff, particularly of the historical kind. My grandmother who spent her early childhood in Spain in the waning years of the 19^th century used to tell me of rude people who left a party without saying goodbye as “despedirse a la francesa,” or “saying goodbye French style.” The expression came from the quick French exit to avoid Wellington’s troops.

In these waning days of summer as fall approaches my once blooming roses (not remontant) have bid me goodbye. But some of my roses, in particular the English Rose Rosa ‘Abraham Darby’ has the odd bloom. I was almost sorry to cut this one today for the scan. It has a glorious scent of fresh fruit. The scent lingers in my nose and Abraham Darby has a few more to go before it politely says goodby.