Young couple under a street light outside Botanica in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY.

Just read two superbly written articles by Cath Pound published in the Culture pages of the BBC website. She is a master of brevity and unramblingness.

The first article is a review of short stories which she recommends for those still with more time than usual for reading. The second article is about the painter Bonnard. I am a photographer who has never really liked color photographs very much, especially color portraits. After seeing Bonnard's work again I shall be sticking to black and white photography.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200612-the-best-short-stories-for-every-taste-and-mood
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190201-the-man-who-painted-moods

I realize this photograph of the quite attractive couple I have displayed above has little to do with the text. Well, if you can see a connection let me know. But I also thought that between the two they might inspire a short story.

Tender moment

A day of extremes - high winds, bad lunch, then purchase of Louis's favorite dog food and reuniting with Daniel at Botanica in Red Hook for a Hemingway. Discomfort, annoyance, satisfaction, sadness and joy. It was a sad day for this couple on the stoop of his house in Carroll Gardens but they did not turn me away.

Waitress with armful of glasses

Botanica has a new manager, an Englishman, originally from the Islands. Along with him, two new waitresses of great skill and courtesy. Braced with a shared Hemingway (that as yet, unbeatable cocktail, the daiquiri), we drove home to Garrison listening to "A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carré. The journey has never gone quicker. The book is a perfectly aimed swipe at the complicity of all the governments fighting the war on terror; riveting characters and suspense.

Botanica, early evening

I was watching the tangled limbs and slumped bodies in the foreground. I did not notice the waitress in the middle distance until I downloaded the picture. Here was the "happy accident". We see the poise and balance needed to be quick but un-rushed, never spilling a cocktail filled to the brim, never banging a plate down on the table or bumping into somebody's chair. Always having time to answer a customer but knowing that another customer is waiting for their food or drink. Knowing on a busy night you can't dally. At the same time, you must be unfailingly pleasant and polite. And to complete the "happy accident", I had, by mistake, set the camera to automatically focus in the middle of the frame, thereby having the waitress in focus.

Two friends under street light

Not long ago we met a couple at Botanica. They talked about their children and the father showed us a picture of his son that he kept on his iPhone. On Friday night we saw the son in real life, sitting with his mother and a friend, again at Botanica. Caroline reminded me that I had always liked taking photographs under street lights, and said that it was going to be a long time before I would see a more beautiful couple than this one. So never mind about your dinner (which had just been put before me), go and photograph them.

I hauled myself and the couple out into the street, put up my tripod and asked the girl to link arms with the boy. I was surprised when she used the arm furthest from him to do this. Occasionally a car or cyclist approached, stopped to watch for a moment, and then passed slowly on around us.

Anxious moment

I began making life going on photographs in London in the early 1960s. Forty five years later I roamed the streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York and found the Botanica, where Caroline and I have had, over the last three months, the best time drinking coffee and Pisco Sours. Late one afternoon, when Caroline had gone to Fairways, I moved seats to be nearer to this couple who looked promising. She laid her hand on his clasped hands but he made no move to touch back. Perhaps that is why her expression is a look of such uncertainty. The woman in the background, seems just to want to talk.

Rainbow at Botanica

Sometimes there are important characteristics in people that you cannot show in a portrait. There is something missing from this photograph, and it is that you cannot see that she moves with extreme grace and lightness.

We had landed up at this delightful place by chance. We were talking to a young woman on the sidewalk outside who was applying gesso to some canvasses, and the proprietor of the bar joined us and asked us in. He was a perfect host and the sandwich was delicious.

He told us that he bought the three story brick building twelve years ago and that it was a burnt out wreck. "I restored it myself."

"Are you an architect?"

"No, an engineer."

Gesso girl

This is the young woman who brought us into the Botanica bar. Sunday was sunny and warm in Red Hook, but the sun was too high and harsh to take her with her canvasses and gesso out in the street where we found her. I took this in the shade on the other side of the street after being fortified by the Botantica's sandwich and expresso.

Weekdays she sells designer doorknobs in Soho.