Dan Rutley - Psychotherapist and John Armstrong August 1987

Doctor Brian Ferris

Both my grandmother and mother were very good teachers. I married my Rosemary and she was a teacher. I was a high school teacher for many years and in Vancouver I taught in a couple of photography schools.

 As an obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential photographer I believe I have relevant and useful information embedded in my head that as I see in this century I will die with it.

What photographers lack in this century is the push of pushy art directors that make you do stuff you do not want. For a Western Living assignment, art director Christopher Dahl insisted that:

1. Print my own colur negatives in my darkroom.

2. Use mirrors to light my subjects.

3. Pick unusual locations.

Years before one day when we were living in Burnaby, my Rosemary told me, "Alex you complain about not being able to print colour negatives. I have signed you up to learn at Ampro Photo Workshops this Monday. You go." To this day having learned how to also print slides I am able to discern colour shifts in my colour pictures, both film and digital. Few photographers now have any idea what cyan or photographic blue are. Colour casts are then corrected by pressing Auto. That does not always work. 

I wrote about that, link below. In the case of John Armstrong (AKA Buck Cherry) I used Robson Square. For the photograph of Rutley I was alone on the Art Gallery roof so I had to put my camera on a tripod and use its self-timer while I pointed my mirror at Rutley’s face. In the Robson Street shot my friend and the writer of the piece, John Lekich is the one who pointed the mirror. 

Dan Rutley - Clinical Psychotherapist 

I am in dismay that photographers do not challenge themselves to shoot different and difficult. Photographic style has all but disappeared.

Just getting permission to go on the Art Gallery roof was challenging.

When I pulled the two 8x10 prints from my files I noted that in the back  had written the correct filtration for my enlarger colour head.