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| Stolen tulip 2 April 2024 |
Because I was born in 1942 I am a product of that past 20th century. As a boy I witnessed the iceman in a horse-drawn cart bringing ice for our icebox. I did not use a telephone until 1954 and I watched TV at about that time.
As a photographer I am verbose on the delights of Kodachrome and Ektachrome. I indulged until 6 years ago in having an in-house darkroom (I began in 1971).
But I have to admit,that while I think of that past century that is rosy now considering that I spent so much of it with my wife Rosemary, there are advantages to living in this one.
There is an event in my life that happened at the Vancouver Film Festival sometime in the mid-90s. I had to photograph two women, Barbara Sukowa and Jennifer Montgomery separately in the Vancouver Hotel Sun Room. I took their portraits with my Mamiya and lights. I rushed home to process the film. I then made two b+w 16x20 prints. I had previously ordered to frames with matts that would accommodate the prints. That evening, at the gala show, my two framed portraits were up. I thought that was a dazzling performance on my part.
Jennifer Montgomery & Barbara Sukowa
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| Jennifer Montgomery |
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| Barbara Sukowa |
In this century, without my darkroom I can take a digital picture, download it, fix it and print it on nice inkjet paper in less than one hour. Take that old-fashioned darkroom!
Those who might peruse my blog and read its contents, might know that I have been scanning the plants of my garden since 2001 and I may now have over 3000 of them. There was one plant that was not from my garden. My New Zealand friend (now gone) Alleyne Cook was working for the Constance Spry School for Girls (he was the only man there as he was the gardener) in London. One day in 1953 Spry told Cook, “You must please cut many flowers as you and I are going to decorate Westminster Abbey for the queen’s coronation"
In 1961 David C.H. Austin introduced his first English Rose, Rosa ‘Constance Spry’. It was and is a multi-petalled once blooming rose that smells of myrrh. In my years of cultivating roses my Constance Spry never prospered. When Cook died I went to his garden and asked his widow Barbara if I could cut one of Aleyne’s Constance Spry roses. I brought it home and scanned it.
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| Rosa 'Constance Spry' 1 June 2020 |
But this was not the last time I scanned a plant that was not from my garden. A couple of years ago I snipped a tulip in a neighbour’s garden. I scanned it, printed it and rang the bell at her house. She was delighted.
More recently I repeated this and again with a tulip. On my way to a supermarket that sells British Cherry Cokes that my youngest daughter Hilary adores I spotted a lovely tulip outside a house. Returning home I parked my car and cut the tulip.
Fifty minutes later I was ringing the bell at the house where I had performed my steal. A woman answered. I gave her the cut tulip and my print. She was delighted.
I could not have done that in that past century.
