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| Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' 17 October 2021 |
One of the supreme pleasures of a portrait photographer (I am one), is to photograph a person more than once and particularly with either short or long time intervals.
I photographed my Rosemary, my daughters Alexandra and Hilary and my two granddaughters Lauren and Rebecca through the years. There is something so special to see progress even if in later years (as in my yearly birthday self-portraits) it is retrograde.
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| Top left R. 'Abraham Darby' R.'Complicata' hips, R. 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' & R.'Shropshire lad' 17 October 2020 |
When I started scanning the plants and flowers from my garden in 2001 my initial purpose was to record accurately the plant. By giving the scan a date it meant if that there were subsequent scans through the years (there have been many) I could discern changes such as the maturing of a rose.
There has been plenty of criticism addressed to social media, particularly Facebook.
As I have explained before when I started my blog in January 2006 I was advised by digital expert Tim Bray to incorporate an RSS feed. This meant that my followers could subscribe to the blog and know the instant I put up a new one.
Nobody as far as I know either use RSS feeds or understands how they work.
The purpose of my blog, (web blog) (I like the Spanish bitácora which is sort of a ship’s log), was to gather my thoughts for the day. At first, it was completely just for me. When I started incorporating my family, they objected to some of the personal stuff. But they might soon understand, particularly when I am gone, the beauty of a daily journal with stuff they might have forgotten.
This is why I put links to my blog into Facebook, Twitter and Medium. If I do not put a link into Facebook (but I have blogged) folks that follow me think I have not blogged.
For me the best feature of Facebook is that at midnight they advise me of five to seven blogs of that date in years past.
Today was stellar for me as the blog was about a scan of
roses on the way out exactly last year. I even like the title Sublimity mingled
from: the archive of the Manchester Guardian, 11 November 1840: The gentle
melancholy of autumn. That is in the link above.
It is for that reason that I will incorporate the URL to last year’s blog and place here that year’s scan with the one I did today.
With my grief at the loss of my Rosemary on December 9, my two cats Niño and Niña and the constant help and phone calls from my two daughters, all keep me more or less sane.
But it is the writing of these blogs that somehow gives me a sense of purpose and an impetus to keep on living. I never would have known that back in January, 2006.