Gary Cramer & the Works - circa 1979-80

With all the recent talk about artificial intelligence I believe that many forget how good search engines have become since Altavista paved the way so many years ago.

I am trying fill holes in my blog so I think of easy ones that I can do in a jiffy. This one is about my beginner’s luck. I put luck, Emily Dickinson into Google and found:

Luck is not chance- Emily Dickinson

Luck is not chance—

It's Toil—

Fortune's expensive smile

Is earned—

The Father of the Mine

Is that old-fashioned Coin

We spurned—

My Rosemary, our two daughters and I arrived to Vancouver from Mexico City in our VW bug. By 1977 I was shooting for magazines and in particular for Malcolm Parry and Rick Staehling’s Vancouver Magazine. I was soon seconded to work with Les Wiseman who had a column on rock & roll called In One Ear. I was dispatched to photograph bands. I was completely ignorant on the topic. The first band I ever photographed was Gary Cramer & the Works. Somehow  got it all right and it is one of my fave band shots. It is not too studied and the folks in the picture appear likeable and unpretentious (this they were).

 My second band shot was of Art Bergmann and the Young Canadians. In neither of these two photographs did I use what was to become my trademark – lighting.

Young Canadians - Circa 80/81

Perhaps one of the reasons for my good luck is that Les Wiseman had an innate elegant way of telling me about the bands I was to photograph. He was low key but to use the lingo of the time , “right on”. 

In the summer of 2001 I was bored. I went to my garden and cut a couple of Rosa 'Reine Victoria' roses. I put them on my scanner using a bamboo stick attached to anArt Deco lamp. The scan was beautiful. I saw the possibilities so I made sure my scan was at 100% the size of the rose, that the colour was accurate and I wrote down the date.

Rosa 'Reine Victoria' Summer of 2001

I was not to know that by today in May 2023 I may have over 3000 of these "scanographs". Particularly now I am busy having fun (and fun it is) arranging the roses and their leaves on my Epson V700 flatbed scanner. Walking Niño mid afternoon and scanning the plants gives me a sense of purpose and a small distraction to avoid my grief over having lost my Rosemary two and a half years ago. 

While I cannot credit Les Wiseman for my beginner's luck with scanning roses give all the credit to Rosemary who gently pulled me into appreciating gardening and learning to love all the snobbish plants she so liked.