Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' 30 June 2026

Robert Frost – 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

In 1962 I was going to an American college in Mexico City, Mexico City College. One of my classes was presided by a man who had been a friend of poet Robert Frost, and astoundingly he looked like the poet. I was much too ignorant (and stupid) to appreciate his class so I sat in the back and yawned constantly.

It was only after I started writing these blogs in 2006 that I started associating my photographs and plant scans to poets and writers.

Today I saw this bloom of Rosa ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ (and English Rose). In all my years of scanning roses (I may have at least 4000 plant scans) I was struck that this bloom was perfection. It was perfection even if you note the centre is slightly yellow and there is a tinge of red in one of the petals.

To make this perfection even more of a Platonic essence, when I saw the scan on my new (but used) 28 inch wide Acer monitor, it looked exactly like the rose itself.

I just wish I could return to that unnamed English Literature professor whose name I long forgot and tell him that I have found my way.

Rosa 'Ketchup & Mustard' 30 June 2026

My memory has played strange tricks in my years of existence. As an example when I was born I remember that a photographer with a magnesium flash almost blinded my entrance into this world.

When I was 8 in 1950 in Buenos Aires we had a live-in housekeeper called Mercedes Bazaldúa. One morning my mother told her, “Mercedes ve a la almacén de la esquina y pedí una botella de cátsup.”

Not long after that we were invited for dinner at the home of my Uncle Harry who was my father’s older brother. I watched him put sugar into his mixture of Colman’s Mustard. Since then I always use Coleman’s (also called Keen’s) and I put a bit of sugar.

Uncle Harry had been born in Manchester and he and his parents moved to Buenos Aires in 1901. At the time the custom in my family was that the firstborn male would have the middle name of Waterthouse. When my grandparents and Uncle Harry arrived to Buenos Aires my father found out that his parents had gotten married in Buenos Aires. He immediately told himself that his brother was a bastard and that he, my father George was the true first born. So he started using the name Waterhouse. When I was born he tried to have the name Waterhouse in my name George Alexander. At the time names in a foreign language that could be translated into Spanish, were prohibited to stand in the foreign language. When my father then insisted on Waterhouse, he slipped a coima (a bribe) an told the registrar that my surname was Waterhouse-Hayward.

And yes I eat my French Fries with Catsup.

Hosta 'Sun Mouse' 28 June 2026

Today I wrote a blog about not being jaded and I featured a scan of a hosta flower and another with a rose. The link is below.

Unjaded

I want to pursue the subject as I was struck by the strange surface of a new miniature hosta I bought this year. It is from a series of many with the name of mouse.

I was not too upset about cutting the flower for the scan and not know what it would have looked once opened because there is a second unopened flower.

These plants that people praise for their spectacular leaves should stop and look at litte details like the multi-coloured surface of this one.

Hosta 'Dream Queen' 27 June 2026

Jaded comes from the noun "jade," which originally referred to a worn-out, broken-down horse which was usually a mare. By the late 1500s, this evolved into a verb meaning "to tire out or fatigue," and by the 1630s, the adjective "jaded" was used to describe someone dulled by overexposure or continual indulgence.

Hosta 'Dream Queen' & Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' 27 June 2026

Since 2001 I have scanned thousands of plants and roses from my garden. And yet each scan becomes a view of wonder every time. I can sort of predict what the scan will look like but that’s not enough to justify my excitement when I see the result.

Because my Rosemary was into the details of the garden she taught me to observe what photographers now do with their macro lenses. I don’t need such a device as my vision is still sharp.

For many years I was a member of the American Hosta Society. Its members praised the beauty of the variegated leave and poopooed what they said were  uninspiring flowers. I begged to differ. I see in the tall scapes (hosta term for the stem of the flowers) why hostas and agaves are part of the very large asparagus family. But I see a beauty in the flowers before they open and after. Sometimes the flowers are all white and sometimes they are lilac almost purple.

This last scan of Hosta ‘Dream Queen’ caught my eye because of its brilliant white and its proximity to Rosa ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’. I scanned the hosta flower with and without the rose.

Not being jaded has something to do with being an artist. I now almost admit being one. I cannot stop doing it. That first scan of Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’ in 2001 reminds me that Jorge Luís Borges says that all first times are infinitely repeated. And yes, these scans have that wonder and excitement of that long lost rose that died. Its memory persists.

26 June 2026

16 May 2026

On days when it is not raining (I today was just fine in the afternoon) I ride my 3-speed bike to Jericho Beach. Every time I take a purposely underexposed photograph with my Fuji X-3 of a view of the city from a park on Point Grey Road at the end of Musqueam View Street.

In the last few years I have seen the disappearance of the kind of photography I used to do for magazines and newspapers in that last remote century. Most of the view photographers that I know that have not gone to retire to the Gulf Islands (God’s Waiting Room) shoot street photographs.

A few of the street photographers in the last century are now seen as mentors like Cartier-Bresson.

I can assert that when I go to Buenos Aires or Mexico I immediately shoot street photographs. But in Vancouver that is becoming more drab by the day I am not inspired. There is one photographer who pretty well insulted me and my only thought is that there is now a deep division between those who shoot street photography and the very few who like me do portraits.

I wonder if the problem is a combination of the proliferation of phones and digital cameras with our reluctance, after that terrible pandemic to talk face to face. We live now in the age of emoji/emoticons. We live in the age that if you want to talk to someone on the phone, the protocol is to text first.

My thoughts right now is if I take this Vancouver photograph every day from the same spot am I a landscape/street photographer? In Vancouver if you take a picture of a red fire hydrant it is of no importance but if you “document” fifty of them is it art?  There are a few photographers here that do that (not fire hydrants). Because I have at least fifty Vancouver views from the same spot, am I an artist?

Jericho Beach -11 June 2026

Jericho Beach -Lens Baby - 17 June 2026

Because I speak two languages, English and Spanish, I am constantly comparing words. I would say that I have become a language studier and I follow trends particularly that of close to extinct words and expression.

As an excuse to post here some of the portraits I have taken of my Ukrainian friend Olena I researched the expression “a work of art”. This expression is in little use as it has been replaced by stunning or iconic.

I started taking photographs in 1959 in Austin when I purchased a Pentacon-F SlR manufactured it what was then called Russian Occupied Germany. Since then I have taken thousands of photographs of which most are portraits. At my age of 83 I am sort of beginning to accept that I am an artist. One of the reasons is that many of my photography peers have disappeared in the British Columbia Gulf Islands which a friend calls God’s Waiting Room. I cannot understand how they retire and now walk in the forests and gaze at the sea. I don’t see myself retiring until I meet with my soon-to-happen oblivion.

While I am not sure if I am an artist, when I look at the many photographs I have taken of Olena I would call her a living work of art. With her in front of my camera I cannot fail.

The story on how we met is funny. Some years ago, around Christmas I received an email from a man in Colombia called Alex who had found my webpage and wanted some photography advice. Because it was Christmas I forgot to reply. Around 2016 I was having my hair cut by Kerrisdale stylist Richard Jeha. He told me, “Alex I have an assistant who speaks your language. I want to introduce you to her.” And so I was introduced to Helena although she told me her name was Olena and that she was from Ukraine. She added that she had moved from Colombia to Vancouver recently. I told her about the man who had communicated to me from Bogotá. I was startled by her reply, “He is my husband."

Olena has posed for me many times and the photographs you see here I took with a new film called Rollei Infrared Film. It is not true infrared. It has an extended range into the red. It shares with the discontinued Kodak b+w Infrared Film in not having what is called an anti-helation layer. This means that some of the light that hits he in-film negative bounces off, particularly when it is over-exposed. Because of its extended range into the red I told Olena to apply (one of her many talents is that besides colouring hair she is a good makeup artist) purple lipstick so that her lips would not be a deathly white.

The third picture, a killer in my opinion I took with my Fuji X-E3 digital camera. The blue colour of the other two photographs I added as I scanned the negatives with my 22-year-old Photoshop-8.       

Hosta 'Abba Dabba Do' 25 June 2026

I thank her for never have prevented me from buying photographic equipment I told her I needed or ignoring all the money I was spending in matting and framing my photographs for shows in which I rarely sold anything.

I thank her for having made me a gardener. In my age of 83 tending my garden gives me a valid excuse to get up in the morning.

But most of all I thank her for helping me notice small details in everything in my life that would bring a rare smile to my face.

The folks of the American Hosta Society (I gave up my membership last year) pooh-pooh the hosta flowers and praise the variegation of their leaves.  Because of Rosemary I have come to appreciate their beauty particularly when I scan them.

Few might know that both agaves (tequila!) and hostas are members of the very large family of the Asparagaceae.

My Kitsilano dining room - Mamiya RB-67- Kodak Technical Pan - 17 June 2026

Early on, when I married my Rosemary in Mexico City on February 8 1968, I saw her as the decision maker of the family. In 1975 she made the decision that we should move to Vancouver. Every day of my life since, I have thanked her in person or in my memory.

Her most telling decision was to move us from our little strata home in Burnaby to a palace in Kerrisdale with a huge corner garden. We had to pay a $3500 monthly mortgage so I was given a domingo, Spanish for an allowance.

In all those years Rosemary made intelligent financial decisions. That all changed 13 years ago, when I made my first important decision. Our Kerrisdale roof had to be repaired and the bathrooms leaked. We could not afford repairs as we had exhauster our money on buying plants for the garden and our trips abroad.

My decision was to sell the house. She was adamant but I insisted. In the height of the influx of immigrants we sold our house for very good cash. With that cash we helped our two daughters. Rosemary found a good financial advisor, Cameron McClean of BMO Nesbitt Burns.

We bought a little duplex in Kitsilano. Rosemary was not happy. She told me, “We are going to be forced to live in a community (it is a double duplex) with people we might not like (she was right!).

Now as I live day to day with my female cat Niña I have no financial worries. I went to see Cameron McClean and asked him about my expensive interest in printing inkjets almost every day. The inks are expensive as is the paper. Cameron, with that stable voice of his told, “You can keep spending money if that is your love. It will not put a dent on your investments.”

And so my decision, my only one, keeps me relaxed knowing that when I meet my oblivion one of my two daughters or two granddaughters will want to live in the house as it is.