I often broach the subject that I am a decent photographer not because of some innate talent but because I have been influenced by mentors all my life.

We do know that the first mentor in history, so named because his name was Mentor, was the chap Odysseus appointed to teach his son Telemachus while he went to fight in Troy.

That does not mean that mentors have to be men. My most important mentors where my grandmother, my mother and my wife Rosemary.

In 2019 (she died 9 December 2020) when we went on a trip to Venice and Florence I went equipped with two digital cameras and two panoramic cameras (a Widelux and a Horizont, both with moving a sweeping lens). I had also recently bought a Galaxy 5 phone. My wife urged me (forcefully!) that I should use it. One immediate aspect of using it is that in art galleries like the Uffizi I found out that by placing my phone on one side of a famous painting I could get an idea of where the painting was and of human interaction with it.

Of course if you are a halfway decent photographer and I think I am one of those you understand when to use a phone and when it is detrimental as in situations with too much contrast or just too dark.

And so I place here in honour of my Rosemary some photographs (I printed all of these) that I took with the Galaxy 5 that is still going strong particularly when I photograph my cats Niño and Niña during my frequent bed rotting.