Scan of Rosa 'Double Delight' 30 June 2025 with photograph taken with Fuji X-E1 and a Lensbaby

Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher' 30 June 2025 - scan

I believe that because I have been a photographer since 1958 and a magazine photographer since 1977 that I can see what is coming and what is disappearing.

I have written several blogs on the loss of style. I have and identifiable style not because of personal merits but because pushy magazine art directors made me do what I did not want to do and they were invariably right. Photographers now without any push take pictures in almost complete isolation.

The extreme telephoto lenses gave us tight shots of eagle heads. I think that this sort of photography will disappear with Artificial Intelligence.

 Artificial Intelligence - My Take

The macro lenses and phones with macro capabilities give us very good close-ups of flowers. Here is where I will insert my small beef.

In that world of garden enthusiasm in the l 90s of that last century people who had good gardens would say, “I like plants.” They would never say, “I like flowers.” People who grow roses never say, “rose bushes.” The simply say, “I have these roses.” And people involved in gardening, like my Rosemary was, always used the botanical name for plants. Thus a Pseudotsuga menziesii is a Douglas Fir.

It was on a lazy and warm summer afternoon in 2001 when I felt bored. I tried something. I cut a couple of Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’,a lovely Bourbon Rose, and placed it over my scanner. I suspended the rose with a little bamboo stick so that the rose would not squash on the glass. It seems I was lucky. Since then I have compiled at the very least 3000 scans of our roses, other plants, hosta leaves and hosta flowers.

Rosa 'Reine Victoria' - scan summer of 2001

From the beginning I had a goal. This was to scan the rose at 100% size, included the exact date and I was most careful in being accurate with colour. I thought that botanical organizations in other countries would have been interested in comparing notes. They were not. I have a few very large prints of my plants in my living room. People who visit say, “I like your photographs of flowers.” The moment I correct then that, “They are not photographs. They are scanographs and I am a scanographer.” They then lose interest and turn around.

My aversion to taking pictures of “flowers” began in the early 90s when my Rosemary forced me to go to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. Once we were there I told her, “Why have you brought me to this place with uncomfortably hard chairs and we are subjected to looking at over 100 bad projected slides of roses?"

Taking a photograph with a macro lens of a rose in situ to me does not show that accuracy of the scanned rose or show a respect for the plant. When I place my rose on my flatbed scanner I work around with the leaves to show the rose at its accurate best.

I must admit now that sometimes I forget that accuracy and I get artsy. Of late I have found tremendous pleasure in showing roses that are past their perfection. There is beauty in wilting death.

Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' and Rosa foetida 'Austrian Copper' 21 June 2025