With magazines and newspapers moribund I look out my living room window into my rose garden and I think that in spite of it all it has been a good life this one of the photographer.

Consider my visit to Salem’s condo in West Vancouver some years ago. When I got there she dispatched me to get one soft vanilla ice cream cone. Not two (if I thought we would enjoy them on her veranda after some photographs), no I had to buy one.

And here are the results, ample proof that had I been a plumber I would have been wealthy but a tad more bored. 

The first time I saw my soon to be wife Rosemary Healey in Mexico City I almost died in a fit of passion and admiration. Rosemary had a slim body, she was blonde and had legs from here to there. In Early 1968 mini-skirts were in fashion and Rosemary was fashionable, towards and inch or two that wasn't.. In record time I married her. I would say, looking back in my memory (and through my photographs of her) that she was a pristine beauty.

I remember the first time I convinced her to accompany me in my VW Beetle to Veracruz to visit my mother. I made sure when I got to the port city that I had plenty of 3-in-One Oil to treat the hinges of her bedroom in Veracruz. The rest is history. We have two daughters and two granddaughters and we have been married for 47 years.

When I see her sans clothing in our bedroom I see a changed body. I am sure the same applies to me when I parade in my birthday suit before sinking into a nice hot bath.

All that has given me food for thought for quite a few years. While men are allowed to age with character lines on our faces, those lines on women are anathema. They are to be remedied with makeup, impossible diets and Oil of Olay. If it comes to worse, then Photoshop Diffuse Glow will  rejuvenate the face, etc.

I gave up a long time ago approaching handsome older women and telling them, “I think that your are remarkably beautiful just the way you are now. You remind me of my fall garden, when my roses and the rest of our plants are ready for winter. They are beautiful in their early decay. I would like to photograph you nude.”

Rosa  'Abraham Darby' August 19 2012

I have never been slapped but the looks I have received have been damning. My requests in writing have rarely  been answered.

In Facebook there are many photographs (many are friends of mine I have never met in person) of women past 59. They somehow manage to point their phones in their direction and through filters they look obviously washed out with no wrinkles. Comments are the usual “likes” but more often they are, “Amazing, you blow me away with your beauty.” But the worse ones are the nasty (do people know this when they write it?) “You are still beautiful.”

And these women persist in posting new pictures of themselves. Most of them are truly awful.

Some 15 years ago two beautiful but young women came to my Robson Street  studio. I told them (I was an idiot), “You are as young as my daughters. I am not in the least interested in either of you beyond the photographs I will take of you.” Suffice to say that they thought I was weird and they never returned.

I tell people that usually do not want to listen to me on the subject that I love my wife and I am especially attracted to her because she is 70 to my 72 years. I am attracted to women who are close to my age. The thought of being on a desert island with one of those young things convinces me I would soon jump into the sea and be food for sharks.

Rosa 'Abraham Darby' May 27 2015

In a later blog I will go into greater detail as to why I consider my roses to be people and that we have many intelligent conversations. But for now I will venture into the subject of my Dowager Roses.

I visit my garden every day and I notice the changes in the garden and particularly which roses are about to bloom (this happens in May), are blooming or are past it. This is when we usually communicate.

Not all roses look terrible when they are past their prime (when is a human female past her prime? What do we mean by prime?). The Gallicas, mostly red or purple turn dark or light after their prime. Some like  Rosa‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ turn almost black and then the meer whisper of air will make them fall apart. Other Gallicas turn to a beautiful metallic gray. These Gallicas are just as beautiful (in my books) when they are past their prime. And many retain there sweet scent.

Other roses, particularly the English Roses, fade in colour and some double their size. The queen (or is that king? Wait for the later blog on this) is Rosa ‘Abraham Darby’. The version you see here is almost 6 inches wide. In its prime it is about 4 inches. The most amazing quality of Abraham Darby (one of the most fruity fragrant English Roses) is that it is even more fragrant when it is past it. And if you attempt to talk to it (she, him?) there is no crumbling.

Are roses like older women, beautiful (not still, please!) in their own way? Are we so used to seeing roses in their prime (a vestige of Victorian exhibitions of roses, perfect roses, in little boxes)? 

When a rose is in its prime this is determined by the various rose society organizations that post what the perfect rose (depending on their class, be they old garden roses, hybrid teas, etc) should look like. Rose exhibitors use tricks like placing umbrellas on poles to protect roses from rain. They know when to cut the blooms and some put them in fridges to cease all action of aging in preparation for a show.

Friends Rat, 16 (far left), and Mike, 17, have this Colt .45 only for defense, they insist, against men who try to pick them up or rob them. "I get hassled a lot" says Rat. "Mike's my protection." They picked Seattle because Mike had once lived there.


Few of the generation growing up or even approaching their 30s might know who Henri Cartier-Bresson was. Few would know that he was in effect the father of street photography. Armed with a compact Leica rangefinder camera (not an easy device to use and I know because I have a Leica III F  much like the one Cartier-Bresson used) he patiently (anticipating his decisive moment) waited for and watched people in the cafes of Paris and other locations in France. I must add that at the time (the 50s) few carried cameras. He virtually had no competition. Not having competition does not in any way diminish his talent for getting the moment on film.

Now anybody with a camera, or a camera with a phone, can take pictures, street pictures and therefore be street photographers.

In those heady days of street photography some photographers swore by their twin-lens Rolleiflexes. With one of these the photographer looked down into the waist-level viewfinder. Those being photographed did not suspect as the photographer did not wield a camera at eyelevel pointing at them. Photographers who could not afford the expensive Rolleiflexes purchased a device for their 35mm cameras that was in effect a periscope. You pointed your camera in an innocuous direction but the camera was really taking pictures (the important ones!) at a 90 degree angle.

In September 2013 while riding trains in Buenos Aires I found that the only way I could take photographs of the riders was to never take out any of my cameras but to pull out my iPhone 3G and fake that I was either taking a selfie or surfing the net.

Contemporary street photography shares a place in my brain with my disdain for countless projections (bad ones) of rose pictures in a Vancouver Rose Society evening (experienced on a hard chair).

Today I read in my NY Times that photographer Mary Ellen Mark died at age 75 (scary as she was only three years older than I am). She was a street photographer that I deeply admired. Why?

Unlike street photographers who take their pictures on the sly/fly Mark confronted her subjects and took portraits. The one photograph of hers with which I illustrate this blog should explain. My guess is that Mark had a 24mm lens on her camera. This means that this photograph was taken by her at very close quarters. That’s brave and shows her commitment for her respect of her subjects no matter who they were or where they were from.