Saturday, February 07, 2009



I have written before in this blog on how it is becoming increasingly more difficult for me to have my family make my granddaughters available for photography.

Rosemary and I filed our family pictures beginning with January 2009 and we went as far back as 2001. From then on the pictures, transparencies and negatives are not as well organized. I find pictures but not the negatives and the other way around, too. Eventually all will be organized. Today I happened to find this picture. I took it in 1986 the ferry to Mayne Island. It is near Active Pass.

In 1986 I was riding the crest of the business and city magazine wave. I was making lots of money. I decided to hire artist Jim McKenzie to paint my daughters. Because McKenzie uses a camera first to make his hyper realistic paintings we needed to give him access to Ale and Hilary. At the time McKenzie was well known for his ferry paintings. He now calls himself a West Coast Realist.



I asked him to photograph them on board. While he was at it I took my own pictures. This one is one of my favourites. In the third picture which I took at the Heffel Gallery on Granville you can see some more McKenzie. The striking woman is not part of the picture. Rosalin Te Omra worked at the gallery (and still does). I positioned her in such a way so that she is part of the painting which had attracted me in the beginning to hire the McKenzie.



Thinking about the picture, it has ocurred to me that when I photograph Rebecca and Lauren I have had at least 19 years of experience learning how to do it with their mother and aunt!

Now if there were only a new surge in magazine work I would call McKenzie and put Rebecca and Lauren on the ferry to Mayne Island, via Active Pass!

Romance In The BC Ferries