Vale Clarence Bordreau

Clarence Bordreau was a talented musician,violin repairer and amateur photographer who lived near Sidney,on beautiful Vancouver Island,Canada.
I never met or spoke to Clarence but he found me via this blog and we corresponded by email frequently about Leicas and photography. His photos and commentary have appeared on The Rolling Road quite a few times.
Yesterday I emailed him. The email bounced. I tried to log onto his business website-Victoria Violin Repairs-and received an error message. Fearing the worst I Googled his name and sadly the funeral notice came up in the searches. Clarence had died aged just 63. I  found out from the funeral notice that a great photo he had sent me a couple of years ago which I had put on the blog which he had titled"a Good Listener" -above-was in fact a clever self portrait.
So very sad that we won't be corresponding anymore and such a pity we never met.
Some of Clarence's photos which have appeared on the blog of his beautiful local area and home.

Framed

A clean break from motor racing for this post. I do try to vary the content of the blog.
Clarence Boudreau from Canada sent me the clever top photo taken on a 2003 vintage Leica D-Lux 1 which shoots 3.2 mp files.Very Canadian and very well spotted.Thanks Clarence.
The second photo was taken by me in June using my hotel room window as a frame.Taken in Villach,Austria.Leica X1 photo.
There are photos everywhere.You just have to see them.

Fiddle repairs and vintage digital photos

Clarence Boudreau repairs fiddles.Well he repairs violins and other string instruments -see  Fiddle Repairs.He lives in a log house in Sidney- see photo below-on Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada just across the strait from the city of Vancouver.
He also takes photos - some of which have previously appeared on TRR . See A photographer's tale .
Clarence does not use the latest digital gear.Perhaps not surprisingly he takes the vintage route.Since the Photographer's Tale blog story appeared he has acquired a vintage Leica Digilux 2 to use alongside his even more vintage Digilux 1 and this is described in Canada Day.
The Digilux 2 is a special camera.Today the specification seems very dated-just 5mp for example- but it has a quite exceptional lens and Digilux 2's sell for very strong prices when they come on the market and some are still used today by top level professional photographers .
He recently sent me some more Digilux 2 photos .Now he does have an unfair advantage that he lives in a very beautiful place but I particularly like the autumn (fall) scene-OK it's pure chocolate box but the colour rendition is so mellow.
Clarence has just told me that he has purchased a Ricoh Caplio GX100.Another vintage digital camera and one I had not even heard of.

 I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that Clarence seems to take the road less travelled in life.Clarence,thanks for the photos of a beautiful place which I was fortunate to visit way back in January 1998.Sadly I did not take any photos then.

More Rocky Mountains high

Another photo from those long neglected negatives- taken in bitterly cold backcountry Banff,Canada,1998.Leica M6.I had a pair of Lowenpro photographer's gloves which were very warm fleece mittens and the tops of the mittens rolled over to reveal the ends of the bare fingers so that you could operate the camera controls.Not something I would ever use in Australia but very useful that trip.

Some days you just strike it lucky

It's more than time to give the Porsche posts a rest so this one is for the photographers.
Back in 1998 on a bitterly cold day I was outback from Banff in the Canadian Rockies in an SUV on a very icy and lonely road when the light and the wind and the clouds suddenly clicked into place for this photo.Taken on my Leica M6 probably with a 28mm Elmarit lens-possibly a 35mm- on Ilford XP2 film.At the time I found this negative impossible to print due to the contrast so it has stayed in my files unappreciated until today when just by chance I came across it and decided to try and scan it.It was tricky to scan but I reckon that it was worth the effort.