Rosa 'Buttercup' 13 July 2019

It was sometime in 2001 that on an idle day (perhaps a weekend) I looked at my Epson flatbed scanner and wondered what I could do with it with a plant from my garden. I chose the Bourbon rose Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’. I might have had beginner’s luck or simply, perhaps, fate rewarded me for not scanning my genitals as many have done before me (and after).

Rosa 'Reine Victoria'

After that startling first try I thought about the consequences. I came to the conclusion that if I scanned the rose (and then other plants from our garden) at 100% size and if I was careful in getting the colour right the resulting image when I added the day’s date would be an accurate recording  of the plant in Vancouver’s growing conditions.

Since then I have scanned hundreds of plants. I scan them all as TIFFs. At the beginning I used 1600 DPI as my choice of scanning size but then a few years after I found out that 800 DPI was more than enough to enable me to make very large inkjet prints.

When people see my framed scans they marvel. They congratulate me for the photograph. I correct them and tell them that they are scanographs and that I am a scanographer. They rapidly lose interest. There is no doubt in my mind that if I were a young man with a desire to make money I could make the rounds of good hotels and sell my scans. They would be safe bets for rooms in this troubled century.

One of the added pleasures of scanning the plants in our garden is that when I make the rounds I can almost talk with my plants. They vie for my attention and perhaps I then think, “Yes Rosa ‘Buttercup’I should scan you today as previously I did so when you were partially closed.” 

Rosa 'Buttercup'

In the case of the flowers of my Hosta ‘Hirao Majesty’ which I previously scanned a few weeks ago you can now see how that elegant bud transformed itself into what you see here today.

Hirao Majesty  
Hirao Majesty II 

Hosta 'Hirao Majesty' 13 July 2019

Scanning our flowers and plants much like photographing people more than once (with years in-between) brings the advantage of recording change. But change in a plant, particularly a rose is change in the lifetime that is only a few months long.