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| Hosta 'Snake Eyes' & Dahlia 'Hypnotica White' - 27 April 2024 |
I photograph to see what things look like photographed. Garry Winogrand
I started taking photographs in 1958. Nine years ago I bought my first digital camera. I now use both film and digital cameras.
Then there is my scanner. I call myself a scanographer and my scans are scanographs. I began in 2001. I have now amassed at least 3000 plant scans. Of late I have scanned objects on my scanner. This means that I am doing table-top photography with a scanner.
Winogrand was famous for that quote about photographing things. It is obvious that when I scan plants I may have an idea of what they will look like. But there is always more in the process. I am always pleasantly surprised.
For reasons I ignore we never had dahlias in our garden. It may have been a Rosemary oversight even though she was a thorough gardener with many interests. I have been buying them and putting them in little pots.
Going to my thoroughly accurate Blogger blog search engine I have found out that I have written of dahlias only once. The lovely quote from Spanish, “saludar con sombrero ajeno” (saying hello with someone else’s hat) applies to that dahlia blog as I cut a neighbour’s spent flower.
A spent dahlia & my existential angst
Now here you can see a pristine white dahlia. I knew instantly that I wanted to pair it with a hosta leaf. This I did and I believe that result is pleasant.
I cannot understand why nobody that I know in Vancouver (or in my circle of photographer friends) why they don’t understand the wonders of a scanner. Winogrand lived in a time where there were no scanners. What would he have made of my efforts?
When I scan my plants (and my Rosemary's plants) I fondly remember her looking closely at her plants. She could bend her limbs in any position. She would notice the little details of plants. She may have been a walking, sentient scanner. I salute her for teaching me to notice little things