Hosta 'Snake Eyes' 17 July 2025

I believe that asymmetry is a snobbish look at visual reality.  Ancient civilizations seemed to be obsessed with its opposite. In most cases so has Detroit. It was the Rambler American that had a touch of asymmetry as its passenger door was larger than the driver’s.

I have written before on the subject. The link is below.

The Beauty of Asymmetry 

Nature Abhors Asymmetry 

My friends of the American Hosta Society eschew asymmetry and when hosta leaves are entered in leaf shows judges eliminate those that are not symmetrical. That changed (a tad) when Hosta ‘Strip Tease’ was introduced. Check a scan in the above link.

My smaller Hosta ‘Snake Eyes’ may be a sport of Strip Tease.

While I was scanning the leaf and flowers I thought about my large collection (I bought them for reasons not just to have a museum) of cameras and came to understand that the only asymmetrical ones are my Nikons and my Leica III-F. I do not believe that their asymmetry in any way affected their operation.

Now with phone photography taking over the world selfies and portraits usually feature faces that are lit the same on both sides. Rembrandt used what is called Rembrandt Lighting which is the result of painting someone close to a window.

In lighting people with chubby faces you light the side of the face that is further away from the camera. The closest side is darkened. This is called narrow lighting. I have a photographer friend who shoots headshots. A few months ago he told me, "Alex my subjects want me to light both sides of their faces equally as if I were using a phone." So asymmetry is now a past in portraiture. 

Hosta 'Joseph' 17 July 2025

 

Because Rosemary was a Master Gardener, we were members of garden societies and our Kerrisdale garden had appeared in Better Homes and Gardens we had frequent visitors to our garden.

Now in my little Kitsilano pad and garden, and with Rosemary gone, few show up for garden visits. There is one advantage to that. It means I can cut whatever flower or flowers I want for scanning with no compunction.

Hosta 'Joseph’ and ordinary dark green hosta is wonderfully floriferous. I cut all the flowering scapes (hosta lingo for stems) so I could scan them. Why? Americans have a rather offensive statement about dogs licking their …. They say, ‘Because they can.”

After years of scanning plants ( I began in 2002) I am always surprised at the beauty of the resulting scan. I can almost predict what it will look like. But surprise is still there.

I do these scans in complete isolation. I am compelled to do them, anyway. Thanks to my ophthalmologist I see very well and I am able to remove all the dust spots on my monitor. The process is fun in my airy oficina.

When I am scanning I don’t feel as much melancholy for my Rosemary as she is almost with me. Because she was appreciative of the little details of her (our) garden she taught me to notice those little things. Most of the members of the American Hosta Society (I am a member) think the host flowers are insignificant. This scan and the many more I have made through the years say they are wrong.

Audrey Hepburn - Late 80s in Vancouver

 In this century, because people can, there is a preponderance of double portraits mostly of actresses that sometimes are underlined, “Remember her? This is what she looks like now. You will gag.”

 For me in that century films were a pleasant escape from reality. I adored Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly. They were in my memory looking at their peak.

So when I faced Audrey Hepburn sometime in the late 80s I made two mistakes. One was to ask her about her former husband Mel Ferrer. She frowned. I then asked her if she had ever had a film partner that was shorter than she was (Hepburn was quite tall when she faced my camera). She said, “Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina.”

My second mistake was that since I did now want to break my memory of how she had been I did not get close with my Mamiya RB-67. Imagine if I had taken a tight portrait of what she looked like then with my heavy duty lights?

And so I can assert that I failed and my only excuse is that I was trying to be well-mannered.

Kira - February 25, 2024

Yesterday after I scanned a white dahlia from my garden I looked up in Google the story of the origins of the plant. I was completely dazzled by the fact that it was a plant that was indigenous to the Aztecs in Mexico. I wrote that had I told myself in the last century that I was going to research dahlias at the Vancouver Public Library I would have been too lazy in the end to go.

The White Dahlia 

What I keep explaining and writing in many of my blogs is that combining the technology of the 20^th century with that of this one will result in astounding results. With many of my photo peers I seem to be trying to sell a sick horse. I am ignored.

Today I want to show the photographs I took of a lovely but mature woman friend of mine called Kira. She posed for me in my little Kitsilano studio on February 25, 2024.

In my little studio I have on the opposite of my middle grey wall a large mirror. I turned my camera in that direction and photographer her in what I saw in the mirror. I used slow shutters and during the exposure I tended to move my camera downwards. In these photographs I am seen on the right.

I also decided to shoot b+w film in my medium format Mamiya RB-67. In the pictures here you can see it on the tripod on the left.

A few days later once The Lab had processed my film I chose one negative.  While I was scanning it I was also pulling it gently towards. I have cropped what might have offended the folks of the “Community Standards”.

I cannot understand why living in a city where we have The Lab (they even process the Ektachrome I like to shoot), Beau Photo (they have the latest lighting equipment which can be bought or rented and a large refrigerator with film that you might not even know exists) and Kerrisdale Cameras with experience experts like Jeff Gin at the North Van store, we do not have more avid photographers.

The Lab 

Beau Photo 

Jeff Gin 

Rosa 'Double Delight - 16 July 2025

 

Because my mother was a busy high school teacher in both Argentina and in Mexico I was educated and mentored by my grandmother, María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena. I was saved of many chinelazos (whippings in which my mother used a Filipino/Chinese slipper called a chinela) because my Abue argued that I was an artist like she was and I was to be allowed some artistic licence.

I have a distinct memory of being taken to an art opening in Mexico City by my grandmother. It was a show by a young Filipino artist. We faced a large painting of a Mexican huarache. After staring at it she told the artist, “Why did you paint something that is so ugly?” His answer was memorable, “Ah, the beauty of ugliness!”

That was a lesson that I have never forgotten in a world where objects and even partners are traded (upgraded?).

The Asahi Pentax S-3 in my scan I purchased used in 1962 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City on Avenida Venustiano Carranza. I could not afford the lovely Leicas being sold nearby at Foto Lipkau.

This camera and my Pentacon-F (purchased new in Austin in 1958 from Adorama in NYCity) were the cameras I used from Buenos Aires to Mexico until Rosemary told me in 1975 we were moving to Vancouver. They served me well until the late 70s. When I went to Mexico City in October 2023 I took the Pentax as I wanted to take it back to its former home. The link to the blog about it below.

The Blue Agave 

A few months ago before the fabulous local camera repair man, Horst Wenzel died he repaired the shutter button of the Pentax that had fallen out. It works perfectly.

Of late I have been going against the grain of my fellow rosarians from the Vancouver Rose Society (I began as a member with Rosemary in 1991) by appreciating the beauty of spent blooms and scanning them. For my fellow rosarians, roses have to be admired at their absolute peak of perfection.

I love the worn out black paint of my Pentax that exposes the brass underneath. My Rosa ‘Double Delight’ is lovely just as it is now.

Both the Pentax and the rose are definitely a double delight.

Thank you Abue for teaching me to admire what is not perfect.

And I must add an unusual feature of my Pentax. In 1977 I lost my Canadian SIN Card (Social Insurance Card). At the time the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) made available a tool to inscribe in metal our SIN number on our expensive appliances to prevent theft. I inscribe my SIN on the bottom plate of my Pentax. When people from the government call me and ask me for my SIN number I tell them, to their surprise, "Let me get my camera and I will give you my number." 

Dahlia hybrida 'Hypnotic White' 15 July 2025

 

Noticing little things

A spent dahlia & my existential angst 
 

Dahlia (UK: /ˈdeɪliə/ DAY-lee-ə, US: /ˈdæljə, ˈdɑːljə, ˈdeɪljə/ DA(H)L-yə, DAYL-yə)[3] is a genus of bushy, tuberous, herbaceous perennial plants native to Mexico and Central America. Dahlias are members of the Asteraceae (synonym name: Compositae) family of dicotyledonous plants, its relatives include the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, and zinnia. There are 49 species of dahlia, with flowers in almost every hue (except blue), with hybrids commonly grown as garden plants.

Dahlias were known only to the Aztecs and other southern North American peoples until the Spanish conquest, after which the plants were brought to Europe. The tubers of some varieties are of medicinal and dietary value to humans because, in common with species of Inula and many other flowering plants, they use inulin, a polymer of the fruit sugar, fructose instead of starch as a storage polysaccharide. Wikipedia

One of the, I believe wonders of the 21^st century is the ability to find out quickly and well information that at one time was only available at a public library. Hence there is that Wikiepedia information on the dahlia. How I was to know it was a plant that the Aztecs new well?

In our garden Rosemary and I had few dahlias. The only one that survived our move is the one you see in the scan here.

 I scanned it and I believe that the results are breathtaking and elegant. Even though I may have at least 3000 scans since I began in 2002, I cannot tire at the beauty of my scanographs.