LA JOLLA PORTRAITURE

Marguerite Ames, pictured here in her 90s, purchased her beautiful La Jolla home in 1927 in Southern California's exclusive Hillside Drive that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and she set about creating a fantasy garden using the most rare and exotic plants she could find in her travels around the world...pictured here with her cat below the branches of a 35-foot rare ginko tree (the yellow leaves) she had planted decades earlier.

Mrs. Ames told me then (the photographer) there were only a few ginko trees in the United States at the time, and that her tree, native to Southeast China, goes back in history millions of years and is so evolved that insects do not bother it.

I remember Mrs. Ames originally stood holding onto her metal walker — when I suggested we set the walker aside, her caretaker quickly objected, but Mrs. Ames said okay and just as quickly she picked up her cat and then looked at the camera — and just like that this portrait was taken and preserved for the pictorial history of La Jolla California.

EDITORIAL MAGAZINE PORTRAIT FEATURE

For "La Jolla Magazine" environmental portrait with old woman, wearing red dress, holding big cat in fantasy garden.

This image was originally shot on Kodak Ektachrome transparency film using a Mamiya M645 1000s and a wide 35mm lens — I scanned it years later on my Nikon 8000ED COOLSCAN film scanner to use in my portrait portfolios.

Caption info contributed by Russell Ramsey, horticulturist, Bennett's Garden Center.
Photo by La Jolla portrait photographer Gary G. Ballard, San Diego.