Johnathan Miller 1934-2019

I met Jonathan Miller (1) once and photographed him once. I make the distinction because photographing somebody does not always constitute an introduction to them. As a photographer you aim quite an offensive piece of equipment at people, ask them to move in this or that direction that they may not want to do, and then quite abruptly leave them when you have what you want. This is, of course, not always the case. You may be offered a drink or a cup of tea; you may even be offered dinner and to spend the night.

None of these things happened when I photographed Mr Miller. I waited for him on the set from which he was directing a BBC production, sat him down at a table, asked him to move a little this way and that, peered into my Hassleblad, pressed the shutter release and that was that.

Then I actually did meet him although this even was a stolen meeting.
I saw him at a club―not a night club―just a kind of place you heard about and went to see what it was like. It was not crowded and he was just wandering about alone with a drink in his hand. I had listened to him on Desert Island Discs (2) that afternoon. He had been describing how he got to know and love Beethoven’s late quartets ― listening to them on his car radio driving along the Los Angeles freeways. I was much taken by this and there the man was, the same day as I heard him describe this event, standing within a yard of me. I thought to hell with accosting famous people who you do not know, I went straight up to him and told him what a pleasure it had been to hear his unusual story. He said he was delighted that somebody had enjoyed it.

Footnote
(1) Jonathan Miller, 1934-2019, medical doctor, theater, film and opera director.  

(2) Desert Island Disc, "a (BBC Radio) programme in which a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you, assuming of course, that you had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of needles."

The programme was created by Roy Plomley in 1946. He also presented it until 1985. It is still broadcast every week.

Between autumn and winter

Nature is resting — gathering strength to make a nuisance of itself. Everything now is grey — soon it will be white and then it will be brown and then black. Cold will have taken hold of us and we shall waste our lives looking forward to spring instead of thinking “This is life; to hell with you, nature.”

Alexis Czapinski

The college champion tennis player Alexis Czapinski was made an All-American doubles player in 2018 and 2019 and All American singles player in 2019. She graduated from Washburn University in May 2019, ending the season ranked third in the nation in division II singles and first in the nation in division II doubles. She is now an assistant coach at the US Military Academy, West Point.

As well as assisting the coaching of the West Point women's team, Alexis has a strong following of civilian players at West Point where she holds clinics and private lessons. This is where I met her.

With firmness, tact, and wit Alexis takes apart your game and puts it back together with the clearest of instructions. As Alexis is only 23 you do not hesitate to use your new found shots to  place the ball to make her run. It is galling, though, that when you angle a shot for a certain winner, she moves across the court at an impossible speed and reaches it ― and it is she who makes the winner.

We also see her here with her dog Bowser whom she rescued in Kansas and brought
north with her.

Will's mother came to my recent Pop-up at 44 Main Street, Cold Spring, looked around at the prints displayed on the walls and asked if I would photograph her son. Her son, she explained, was an archer.

He told me that he had got good enough now to shoot from horseback. (Plans for a video of that.) He does not go after animals. He likes Korean bows but makes his own arrows. One of his bows belonged to his grandfather but he can't use it as his grandfather was left-handed.