IN
1904 Birma Still married John MacLean, a local ranch hand. As a wedding
present, Mr. Upham gave Birma a new folding Kodak camera which made
postcard size prints. This inspired Birma to photograph various country
scenes, print them on postcard size paper and tint them with transparent
water colors. She placed them on display in the La Panza post office and
store. Many travelers and neighbors purchased her pictures to mail as
postcards.
Birma also experimented with taking
photos of California wild flowers growing in the neighboring area from
the Carrisa Plains to Santa Margarita. Birma met Miss Alice Eastwood,
and authority on plants native to California, when she visited friends
on the Carrisa Plains. Birma sent prints of the flowers she had
photographed to Miss Eastwood to identify. Birma wrote this
identification on the negatives to insure a more permanent record of
some 130 flowers and plants native to the area.
John and Birma MacLean
moved to the Santa Rosa/Petaluma area in 1908 and one of their neighbors
was the brother of noted naturalist Luther Burbank. Through this
brother, the MacLeans met Burbank who became quite interested in Birma's
wild flower photographs. As a result, the folks back at La Panza
gathered seeds, roots and bulbs of native plants for Burbank, who in
return sent to La Panza various plants he was experimenting on in Santa
Rosa. He needed to test these plants under the hot, dry conditions of La
Panza. The plants included early versions of the "plumcot,"
several varieties of plums and prunes, spineless cactus and assorted
vegetables and flowers including an early version of the Shasta daisy.
While her husband Jack
MacLean worked as a Certified Public Accountant for the cities of Santa
Rosa and Petaluma, Birma once again her attention to photography. She
took photos of public buildings and local scenes of interest, printing
them on postcard paper and coloring some of them. She placed these
photographic postcards on display in local stores and sold a fairly
large number. She also went door to door, taking photos of people, their
houses, children and pets, making prints to order. During this time in
Petaluma, Birma took over 500 photographs of public buildings in the
area. Many of Birma's photos were printed in the Petaluma newspaper at
the time of the Petaluma centennial celebration.
In 1908 Petaluma was a
sprawling, rural community with homes on small acreage for large gardens
or orchards and space for chickens, pigs, horses and even cows. This
meant that Birma, going from house to house, would cover several miles
in seeking customers for her photographic skills. We can see that her
door-to-door photography was only sporadically successful from her diary
of daily happenings. Her entry for November 26, 1908, states:
"Walked eight or ten miles. Took a few pictures." But she
loved photography and kept at it, for it did provide a small income.
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