2016 A Year in Pictures

Here is my page of photos that ran in the January 10th print edition of The Kelowna Daily Courier featuring my favorite images from 2016.

Carpe diem for a photographer

This is the story of a man with a camera and bird with a fish in it's talons. They were both hunters of sorts. A part of my job as a photographer for the Kelowna Daily Courier is finding pictures that are not attached to any sort of a story, at our paper we call it enterprising, grab the camera, head out on foot or by car and see what one can find.

 So there I was back in August of 2002 wandering around the north end of the Waterfront Park at Rotary Marshes in Kelowna, BC, on hot summer day, camera in hand wondering what I could photograph for the paper the next day. It was a quiet day with only a few people at the beach or people out walking their dogs enjoying the day, but I had lots of those kind of photos. Then I looked up and saw this osprey with what appeared to be a fish in it's talons. I attached my 80 to 200mm ( plus a 1.4 converter ) to my Nikon DH1 digital camera and zoomed in to get a better look, for sure the osprey had just caught a big fat fish and was taking it back to it's nearby nest where there just happen to be a couple young osprey eagerly waiting a fine fish meal.

 Just as the bird landed on the man-made nest the one of the young birds popped it's heads up to see what mom or dad had brought home. The fish which once lived it's life swimming in the lake was now food for the young osprey. I made a picture of this precise moment, this is what Henri Cartier-Bresson talks about being "The Decisive Moment".

 Later I went back to the office to download and edit through my pictures, the Courier had only switched from film to digital less than a year before. I plugged my card into a card reader at the photo desk in the newsroom, to see what I had photographed. There was really only one choice in terms of timing with the osprey landing on the nest. When one of my editors walked past the computer monitor, he said something like "Nice photo!".

 The next day the photo ended up on page three in black and white with a headline under the photo that said "Carpe diem" ( roughly translated to seize the day ). That day and the days after the paper received a lot of reader reaction with phone calls and a strong demand for reprints which we offered at the time for a reasonable fee. One of those calls was from a fellow by the name of Joe Yamaguchi, Joe was very kindly man and very enthusiastic about my osprey photo, he simply loved it. Joe also wanted a big print, bigger than what was normally offered by the Courier which was 8 x 10 inches in size. So after getting approval from the powers that be at the Courier, I went looking for a place in town who would print it for me at 16 x 20 inches, I took the digital file on a DVD to Photography West who printed it for me. I chose Somerset velvet as the paper of choice a beautiful mat surface paper. The print looked fabulous, it actually came out looking much better than I thought it would, being that the Nikon's digital sensor was only 2.75 megapixel in size.

 The story doesn't stop here. After giving Joe his print, he was so impressed that he gave his print to a good friend of his, who he had mentioned on the phone during one of our conversations, when he first mentioned his name I had not initially recognized the name, John Kenneth Galbraith ( who passed away in 2006 ). Mr. Galbraith was a well known economist who served in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. John Kenneth was living in Cambridge Massachusetts where Harvard University is located and was also born in Canada.

 Joe phoned me again, asking for another print the same size, as he had given the print he had to his friend Mr. Galbraith. I ordered another big print and when that was done sent the print off to Mr. Yamaguchi.

 In the meantime Mr. Galbraith was so impressed with my osprey photo, he though it should be in what was then called the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, its now called the Harvard Art Museums which include, the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985). Mr. Galbraith donated his copy to the Fogg Art Museum that meant I made another big print for Mr. Galbraith for himself personally. This time communicated with Mr.Galbraith directly and we also corresponded through letters for some time afterwards. I eventually received a letter from the Fogg Art Museum confirming that my osprey photo was officially accepted by the institution and that it had been donated by John Kenneth Galbraith.

 I would have to say that this photo has been one of the most popular photos with the general public I have ever taken in my 40 year career as a newspaper photographer. The photo went on to sell upwards of $2000 worth of reprints for the Courier.

 I think I was truly able to "seize the day" when I made this photo and perhaps for the osprey too as we were both hunting for something but with different objectives in mind.

Listening carefully for great pictures

Today's post is about using more than my vision to find great pictures. On this particular day in October of 1980 I was on my way to a photo assignment in the Bramalea Civic Centre in Brampton Ontario. When I finished that job, I used the sound of music to guide me to a children's ballet class being being held in one of the classrooms. I was sent there by the newspaper I worked for at the time, The Brampton Times where I had been working for the past yea and a half.

So there I was walking through the foyer of the large building and I could hear the distinct sound of some lovely piano music being played as it echoed throughout the building, I used my ears to guide me and I soon found the sound was emanating from a children's ballet class. I knocked on the door and asked the instructor if it would be okay to photograph the class for the Times newspaper, I noticed that there was wonderful light spilling in from the floor to ceiling windows that was along one side of the large room, perfect for natural light photography with no flash which is what I like best.

With the instructor's okay, I spent next 1/2 an hour or more photographing the dozen or so children, it was a class for pre-ballet class for 4 and 5-years-olds. Their black and white ballet outfits were perfect for black and white film that I was shooting at the time in my Nikon cameras. After I got back to the office, my editor must have been quite pleased with my pictures because the paper ended up running a full page of pictures. What is noteworthy about this picture in particular is that this photo of the little ballerina girl, ( shot with a 85mm lens ) touching her nose to her toes won me my very first photography awards. I received two awards for the same picture, first runner-up award for Feature Photography and the other, also first runner-up for Excellence in Photography ( under 35,000 circ. ) by the Western Ontario Newspaper Awards, the 27th annual at the time when it was held in April of 1981 in Kitchner Ontario. The Western Ontario Newspaper Awards ( now the Ontario Newspaper Awards ) had a lot of very strong competition by some of the top papers in Ontario. That year Dick Wallace of the London Free Press took the top feature photo award and Willy Waterton of the Owen Sound Sun Times took the top Excellence in Photography award. As with much of my work I was pleased that I won for my feature photography which has always been my strong point. I was grinning ear to ear.

Winning that award and a strong portfolio landed me on the short-list for a staff photographer's job at the very prestigious Kitchener Waterloo Record in the fall of 1981, I believe I was one of two photographers that they were seriously looking at. I went through a challenging interview, one of the toughest I have ever gone through, the two photo editors of the Record sat opposite of me in the photo department, and they would rattle off questions one after another with hardly time for me to catch my breath. In the end I didn't get the job, I believe it went to Philip Walker, had I got the job it would have been a big step up from the Thompson owned Brampton Times, the Record at the time had state of the art color and black processing film darkrooms, seamless walled studios and pretty well the best of everything. I was in awe.

After that a recession hit Ontario and other parts of Canada in 1982, photography openings a papers were few and hard to come by, I applied for one position at the Kingston Whig Standard and was told that my resume was somewhere in a stack of 200 that had applied so far applied. I never did get called for an interview with the Whig. I cooled my heels for a while and gave some deep thought as to where I wanted to go with my life, stay in Ontario or perhaps head back west to my beloved British Columbia. So in 1983 like I did in coming out to Ontario I made up a number of applications with a portfolio and sent them off via Canada Post to a number of B.C. papers including the Kelowna Daily Courier.

 Later in the summer of that year, I was asked to step into the publisher's office at the Brampton Times, the man in charge at the time was Victor Mlodecki, a tall man with a generous smile who was well respected and liked by the staff. He said to me "So I hear that you are looking for work?" Ah yes I said somewhat cautiously, as I had not said too much around the newsroom about seeking new employment. With that he said there is a staff photographer's job waiting for me at the Kelowna Daily Courier, I think it took me a couple seconds to answer, I just had to talk with the managing editor of the Courier at the time, Dave Henshaw to finalize the job, a much easier interview by far! While in Victor's office I was a bit speechless as it happened so quick and unexpectedly, within days after submitting my two weeks notice for the Times I was packing up my belongings preparing to move. So like I did heading out to Brampton 4 1/2 years earlier, I loaded up my bright orange Volvo in mid September with all my worldly goods and struck out east along the Trans-Canada Highway for Kelowna, B.C, it was a very good deal for me, as I was able to keep my start date and holidays owed with the Brampton paper, it actually was more of a transfer as the Courier and Times were both owned by Thompson Newspapers Inc which a the time owned dozens of papers across the country.

For my new home I would be living in the heart of the beautiful Okanagan Valley one of the most desirable places to live in all of Canada. I started my new job at the Kelowna Daily Courier on October 3, 1983. My first photo assignment for the Courier was to photograph the then federal agriculture minister, Eugene Whelan who held a press conference outside of the BC Tree Fruits offices on Water Street.

A new adventure was about to begin.

A Star photo assignment

Here is the story of how I paid a visit to the Toronto Star newsroom to have my portfolio reviewed by one the staff photographers, John Mahler and ended up doing a photo assignment which made page A20 of the Tuesday March 4, 1980 edition of the Toronto Star less than a year after I started at the Brampton Daly Times in May of 1979. I met John through Mike Crossman my previous editor at the Gazette who had given me John's name to look up while there I was in the Brampton area. John and Mike had worked together in Vancouver at one time.

 But first some background… After I had left the weekly newspaper the Goldstream Gazette on Vancouver Island in April or 1979, I found myself a job at the Brampton Daily Times in Ontario. It's interesting how I found the job, I sent out a number of letters of application along with 10 to 12 of my original photographic prints to smaller size newspapers across Canada that had a circulation of 10,000 to 15,000. I probably sent out at least a dozen or more of these unsolicited applications and received quite a few letters back saying thanks, but there are no openings for photographers at the time.

 However I did receive one letter from the Brampton Daily Times, a Thompson owned paper not far from Toronto, a bedroom community for the many people who commuted on a daily basis. It was arranged for me to I make my way up to Naniamo, BC on Vancouver Island where I was interviewed by the publisher of the Naniamo Daily Free Press, John Farrington. He wore a big brightly coloured psychedelic tie like out of the 1960's and looked over my portfolio, he must have liked what he saw and said if I wanted the job it was mine. He asked if I had ever been to Ontario? I said, "No" he replied "It's flat".

With that I packed up my bright orange Volvo with my worldly goods and proceeded to drive the entire 4800 km distance starting out from my parent's home in Langford all the way to Brampton, via the Canadian route. I had never been further east than Alberta. About ten days later, I arrived in Brampton. I remember eagerly grabbing a copy of the paper from the paper's vending box only to see a cheque presentation shot as the paper's main front page photo for that day. I was bit disappointed to say the least, I had my work cut out for me in more ways than one. For one thing my work load was much higher instead of producing say maybe 10 photo assignments a week for the the Gazette, I had many days at the Times when when I was producing ten assignments a day, plus I had to process film and make prints, write cutlines etc. Thus began my daily newspaper career.

....So there I am sitting in this very large Toronto Star newsroom, the biggest I had ever been in my life, feeing a little overwhelmed. John was looking over my portfolio, graciously giving me his time some helpful advice on how to improve my portfolio, he said I needed more hard news and sports. True to this day, my strongest work has always been feature type photography which I have always excelled at.

Anyway, John is looking over my bundle of prints, when the phone rings as they usually do in most busy newsrooms across the country, so John picks up the phone and on the other end is one of the Star's readers who thinks that three generations of family playing cards would make for a nice photo in the Star. I could hear John on the other end of the conversation, saying the he would send a photographer over and could he please have the address. John hangs up the phone, hands me the piece of paper with the address on it and say do I want to try this photo assignment? Like any good photographer not only did I have my portfolio with me but I had my cameras with me too. So off I went to this home in the Scarborough area of Toronto, I recall that it seemed to take forever to get there, but I found it okay.

At the home were these two old sweet ladies, May Fuller, 99 and Agnes King, 101 who liked playing gin rummy, so for the family generation photo King's great-grand-daughter 6-month-old Cheryl Reid was positioned between the two. Babies being babies and ones that are teething like to chew on things, it didn't take long for the baby to grab hold of one of the cards she was given to play with and start chewing. I knew I had my shot, shot the picture with a wide 24mm lens on my Nikon camera, so I drive back to the Star office at One Young Street, drop off my film and related cutline info thinking it will never make it into the paper. The next day I'm back at work at the Brampton Times, I go out to the street corner and grab a copy of that day's Star, I'm looking through the paper, not really expecting that my picture would appear, but also realizing that it would be cool if it did. Turning through the various pages of the paper I found my picture nice and big with good play on the the 20th page of the "A" section, ( March 4 1980 ). I never mentioned anything to my Brampton Times editors as I wasn't sure what they would think of my "freelance" job but it was a fun assignment and never did get me a full time job at the Star, but maybe got my little toe in the door.

Mentorship

I got very lucky soon after I had graduated from high school in that I met up with a great mentor at the start of my photography career. During the summer of 1976, my father thought I should try and see if there was any photographic work at the weekly newspaper, the Goldstream Gazette, the paper had just started publishing in March of 1976 and was co-owned by two experienced journalists, one of them was Mike Crossman, a photographer with extensive experience in both freelancing and working on at daily newspapers. The Gazette office was not far form the auto body shop that my dad worked at, so one day soon after I walked down to the Gazette office and asked to see Mike.

 I think Mike told me to come back with some prints that I could show him, and return I did with a stack of prints tucked under my arm. As I sat in the Gazette office in a nice oak office chair, Mike sitting opposite from me in a similar oak chair leaning back as he gazed over my prints. I don't remember all the things he said, but I recall he picked up a orange grease marker pencil and started marking up all my prints. I guess I was little surprised but hey they weren't any good anyway! at the end of our meeting he went over to a filing cabinet, pulled out a few rolls of 35mm film, ( Kodak Tri-X ) and told me to go shoot something. Which is what I did, that led to a photo assignment and many more one on one mentorship sessions in the Gazette office. I learned a lot in those years which gave me a solid foundation to build my career in the years ahead. The picture posted was one of the prints where Mike where gave me some helpful advice, on the print he wrote: "Shutter speed 40% important" ( so I wouldn't forget ). The photo was not very sharp because I shot it at too low of a shutter speed.

The picture is of the E & N Railway Dayliner Budd car #9103 that derailed not far from our family home, I think it happened in the early summer of 1976, the picture was never published as I had not started work at the Gazette at that point, but I recall that the train event caused quite a bit of commotion with people going to have a look at the derailed Dayliner and gave me an opportunity to photograph my first "spot" news event.

A Vancouver Island trip on the Dayliner

When working as a photographer for the Goldstream Gazette in January of 1978 I was contacted by a reporter, Bruce Obee who was doing freelance work for the Toronto Star at the time. The Star assigned Bruce to do a story on the E & N Railway Dayliner. The Star also wanted some photos to go along with the story, so I ended up with the photo part of the assignment.

 A bit of background, Victoria–Courtenay train (formerly the Malahat) or what most people just call the "Dayliner" is a Budd Rail Diesel Car that used to run from Victoria to Courtenay, BC on Vancouver Island a distance of 362km ( 225 miles ). The Dayliner rumbled past my parent's home on Station Avenue in Langford on a daily basis twice a day except for Sundays. I remembered the train well, I could always tell when the train was passing our home as it slightly shook our house, we all got used to it after a while, one year it even derailed not far from our home, it was one of my first “spot news” events that I photographed but never got published, I was still in high school at the time. The Dayliner was operated by Canadian Pacific Railway ( CPR ) in 1979 it was taken over by Via Rail, it ran until 2011 when the passenger service was discontinued due to lack of repair of the track and several railway bridges.

 I don't recall the reason behind the story and why the Toronto Star was interested in a passenger train from Vancouver Island, I think it might have been about the CPR selling the passenger train service to Via Rail. I wish I had a copy of the story and photos that ran in the Star, I seem to remember seeing a copy of the paper, but I never kept a copy.

 The photo assignment was a day-long affair leaving the Esquimalt area of Victoria early in the morning, the trip to Courtenay, BC was almost a 5-hour trip one way, it returned the same day, so it was dark when returning to Victoria in the short days of winter.

 It was a really wonderful day, although it started out as a typical dark rainy day with some wet snow in the Victoria area the snow was much greater in-depth the further one traveled up-Island, so by the time the Dayliner arrived in Courtenay there was a foot or more of fresh snow, it was as they say a winter wonderland. The snow was magical it made for great photos with the old train station and the Dayliner parked along the side. While the train was traveling along the route I made photographs of the train engineer, the conductor, and passengers.

 I shot a half dozen rolls of Kodak Tri-X ( 20 exp. ) black and white film during the trip with my Nikon cameras, I went back the next day to shoot a few pictures of the train going over the Niagara Creek trestle, a specularly high trestle along the route accessible from Goldstream Park. Then I processed the film, made some 8 x 10 prints, and gave them to the reporter who sent the pictures and the story off to the Toronto Star. A few weeks later I received a cheque for $75.00 ( about $257 today ) not bad pay for a young photojournalist just starting out.

 These pictures are scans from my original negatives which I still have today.

Here is a link to more photos from my 1985 dayliner trip.

The waving hand of royalty

This is a story about my photograph of Prince Charles, actually just his waving hand through the window of his passing limousine. While working for the Goldstream Gazette, a weekly newspaper on Vancouver Island in early April of 1979, we heard that Prince Charles would be paying a visit to Pearson College UWC ( United World College ) of the Pacific, this event happened shortly before I left the Gazette for a staff photographer's job at the Brampton Daily Times in Ontario.

 As I recall the visit was a closed affair so no media were invited on to the campus grounds, but we had heard that the Prince would be traveling along Metchosin Road in a motorcade and that students from Sangster Elementary school which is located along the road would be out waving to the Prince as he passed by. So I stood there too with my trusty Nikon.

 Soon the motorcade came traveling down the road and slowed down, but did not stop, the Prince had rolled down the window of his car, but because he was sitting quite far back in the rear seat all I could see was his waving hand, so that was the picture that I got when he passed by school and the kids and the picture that my editor's used in the next week's edition. I think I only shot about 3 or 4frames as I had no motor drive on my camera.

 Unfortunately I don't have any original prints anymore, just a newspaper page where the photo was featured along with others as part of "My Favorite Photographs" when I left the paper. I recall having shot the photo with a Nikon F or F2 as I had two cameras and used my 105mm lens. I had three lenses at the time, a 35mm,105mm and a 200mm. I never had motor drive on my Nikon cameras when I worked at the Gazette.

One thing of note when I arrived at the Brampton Times in May of 1979 newsroom staff were curious that I had no motor drives on my cameras shortly after that that I bought a MD-3 motor drive for my Nikon F2 which moved film past the shutter at about 4 frames a second. Also in my Gazette years, I had nothing wider than a 35mm lens, I also bought a 24mm wide angle lens a few months after I started at the Brampton paper.

In the right place at the right time

This is a story about my very first front page picture that I had published 38 years ago in a large metro daily newspaper, the Vancouver Sun. I had been working at the weekly newspaper the Goldstream Gazette for about a year and a half and my editors George and Mike at the time thought it would be a good idea to get me some experience and exposure covering politics and some would say that British Columbia has some of the strangest and wackiest politics in the the country.

So with a media pass in hand I was sent off to the B.C. Legislature in March of 1978 for the opening of a new session which occurred on the 28th of that month, I ended up photographing from the upper gallery where the media cameras were allowed and photographed the procession coming into the chamber. I made my pictures which included speaker Ed Smith as he walked in and then delivered his resignation statement. before the calling of a new session. I think at the time I thought he was going to read the Throne speech or something like that. With that the Legislative Press Gallery was in an up roar, and all of a sudden my pictures were "something". My pictures were important because Mr. Smith had resigned in the wake of a controversy surrounding the hiring of a girlfriend for the auditor-general's office.

The Sun's Victoria Bureau reporter, Harvey Oberfeld asked if I had any pictures, and I said yes I had some pictures of Ed Smith resigning, with that I quickly spun the rewind crank of my Nikon camera and handed the film over to Harvey, who then sent it via float plane to the Vancouver Sun office on Granville Street where it was processed and edited, the next day to my surprise I had two pictures a bigger one and smaller one, on the front page of the Wednesday, March 29th ( 1978 ) edition of the Sun. Wow I had hit the big time! I so was elated, in addition to that I received a cheque for $50 a week or so later, that was very good money for a young photojournalist starting out, which would be around $173 in today's money.

 I figured with my foot in the door so to speak that I would try for full time employment with the Sun, a few months later I dropped off my portfolio to the Sun, then they went on strike and I didn't get my portfolio back for about 30 years, but that is another story ( which you can read here ). This story and others are part of my 40 years of being a newspaper photographer.

What was lost is found in the most unexpected way

 This is a story about my portfolio that went missing for 30 years. The portfolio consisted of 22 silver gelatin prints mounted on nonarchival card stock, mostly feature type photos including a few sports and spot news photos. I made this collection of photographs while working as a photographer at the Goldstream Gazette, a weekly newspaper on Vancouver Island from 1976 to 1978. Although I have had my portfolio back for some time now, this was the start of my career as a newspaper photographer.

 A bit of background, I had made up a portfolio of my best photographs in the late 1970's, I was eager to move on and was actively looking for work at a bigger paper, I set my sights on the Vancouver Sun, probably a bit of a big step for a 20-year-old with only two years of experience on a weekly newspaper. My intent was to show it to the photo editor of the Vancouver Sun, who I believe was Charlie Warner.

 II made my way to Vancouver one day in late October of 1978 and paid a visit to the Vancouver Sun editorial offices but because I had made no appointment, the photo editor was not able to see me as he was busy. I had my portfolio in hand so I asked if I could leave it for Mr. Warner for him to have a look at when he had some free time and I would come back the following weekend and pick it up.

  A week later I was about to head over to Vancouver to pick up my portfolio and found out that both the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province had gone on strike on November 1, 1978. When I heard about this unfortunate turn of events I phoned wondering if I could get my portfolio back  —no dice, the building was locked and I would have to wait till the strike was over to get it back. Well, the strike ended up lasting for 8 months and the papers didn't resume publication until June 26 of 1979.

 In the meantime, I made up a new portfolio and found myself a job at the Brampton Daily Times, in Brampton, Ontario which I started on May 1st of 1979. as time went on I forgot about my old Gazette portfolio that I had left at the Vancouver Sun.

 I ended up moving back to British Columbia when I was hired as a staff photographer at the Kelowna Daily Courier on October 3, 1983. Then one day sometime around 2008 or so I received a phone call from Cheryl Shoji the photo editor at the Vancouver Sun and she asked me, "I have a portfolio with your name on it that was found in the bottom of a drawer in a desk", I thought to myself, I can't remember submitting any kind of portfolio recently, I asked "Are you sure its mine?" then it dawned on me that this was probably the portfolio from the Gazette, I had left in the late 1970's, she said it looked quite old and beat up. So she sent it back to me and a week or so later I received a package in the mail and for sure it was my old missing portfolio that I had made up at the Gazette, it was very interesting to look at what I was doing all those years ago. I was elated and happy to get it back.

 I have featured 11 of my favourite photographs on my blog here.