Sunday, 24 November

Since ‘Thor’sday’ we moved on to Bruce and Sally’s on Friday where Linda and Jean perfected their photographing techniques then on to two homes yesterday – our marathon day – where we photographed some 21 paintings at Erik and Jacquie’s and Barb’s.

We were like an assembly line yesterday with Linda and Jean photographing which entailed eyeballing the photo composition through the camera viewer, adjusting angles, F-stops and shutter speeds. I was measuring each painting before handing them off to Linda and Jean then taking down the information about the painting such as date, title and even the f-stop and shutter speed used to photograph in a spreadsheet. Then painting would be handed back to Barb so that we wouldn’t inadvertently re-photograph it again. The room slowly began to be emptied of paintings as we worked. Finally there were two large ones on walls that Linda and Jean expertly snapped using the light in the room.

Over the past few days I’ve heard stories that have created new dimensions in the man I called Grandpa. I learned that when Harry was a house painter, paints that are, today, blended by computer had to be hand mixed. I could see how he would have to keep the color consistent from day to day. That is an amazing skill and you can see in his paintings the amazing virtuosity in his employment of color.

On a side note: you may have noticed the ‘Gallery’ in the sidebar where you can view some of Harry’s paintings. That’s where I’ve added some photographs to begin to show what we’ve documented. When I first started this blog, it was a learning experience for me and I needed to check out whether I could successfully add pictures to the Gallery which is why there was a photo of Kurt’s menorahs. It has been removed since the focus of this website is Harry’s paintings.