Dmitri Kasterine: Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Showing posts with label Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Show all posts

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Gardener in large hat

We noticed the mulch used around his bit of the BBG, (herbs mostly, huge swathes of basil, purple sage etc) that looked very like soil. He told us it was Buckwheat hulls. Never seen a garden with fewer holes bored through the leaves of the plants... and they use no insecticides.

Shakespeare's gardener

Anne O'Neill manages and maintains the incomparable Shakespeare Garden at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It had been a long dry spell when we met her. "How do you get the water here?" I asked. "I carry the hose on me back." she replied.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Girl with floral earrings

Spotted on the steps of the High School on the way from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to where our car was parked. She is a 9th grade hip hop dancer.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Woman cradling a Rolleiflex

She was given it by a photographer she worked for. My favourite camera and format, the square. I must follow her example and use mine again. Film is still plentiful.

From the photographer

I started this blog in December 2008. At the time I did not know if I would enjoy it or not, and whether I would get any response to it. I am enjoying it and people have responded. I made a silent pledge at the outset not to say much about my artistic intentions or the composition of the photograph. I would just talk about what led up to taking the picture and what it was like doing it.

The discipline is actually not a strain for me, because I do not desire, and really have never been capable of discussing my intentions, artistic or otherwise. My wanting to take a photograph appears as fast as a bolt and without warning when I spot the subject. I then take it or not, depending on how brave, awake, or fumbling I am with the camera. I enjoy exploring, looking for things that stop me, or frighten me. To fear to take a picture usually means you want to take it.

dmitri@kasterine.com

Biography

Born in England in 1932, I started out as a properly brought up young gentleman with an English mother and White Russian father. He fought wars all his adult life and died in a car accident in the North of England at the age of forty-seven.

Photography came to me at aged eleven, photographing birds at the bird feeder my mother put up outside the kitchen window. After the acute disappointment of the birds being minute specs in the picture, I did cows in the fields around us in Kent.

After the wine trade, Lloyd’s, racing cars, selling cars and flying aeroplanes to Australia, I became a photographer. I photographed my friend’s engagements and their weddings. I worked for magazines and advertising agencies.

I was sent to Los Angeles to photograph Mick Jagger, returned to England via New York where I met Salvador Dali in the elevator at the St. Regis Hotel. Thence started my interest in living here. Three or four years later I moved to America, remarried and lived happily ever after.

Dmitri Kasterine