1, 2, Click! : He Keeps the Tournament of Roses in Focus

The seven young women, radiant after their selection Monday as the royal court for the centennial Tournament of Roses, turned and smiled as a hundred photographers, professional and amateur, still and video, pressed forward for pictures.

But when an elderly man wearing a battered hat and toting an ancient camera motioned them into position with a few flicks of the wrist, they quickly obeyed.

Meet Clem Inskeep, a Tournament of Roses tradition who will celebrate his 80th birthday Monday, the same day he photographs the 1989 queen.

He is a paparazzo welcomed and remembered fondly by his subjects. And he is an anachronism, avoiding color photography of one of the most vividly colorful pageants in the nation and using instead a 40-year-old camera to take black-and-white pictures.

“Everything I use is obsolete,” Inskeep said with pride.

One tournament official called Inskeep “the unofficial official photographer. He gets the pictures nobody else can get.”

Inskeep can still name the first court he shot--back in 1943--and judging from a sample Monday, they know him just as well.

“He’s been here every single time I’ve come,” said Lacy Kiyoe Endo, 17, of South Pasadena, a member of the royal court. “He’s the little old man who takes pictures. He says, ‘one, two, three,’ and then takes it on two.”

“I found out long ago if you want a good picture, shoot on two,” Inskeep said. “If you wait till three, they blink their eyes.”

For a while in the early days, Inskeep said, he was the only photographer allowed at one major event, the announcement of the queen. Copies of the photos he took were distributed by tournament officials to the news media.

Inskeep, who is married and lives in Altadena, moved to California from Ohio in 1940. He once ran Clem’s Camera Corner, a camera shop in Pasadena, then worked for a while as a salaried tournament photographer. Today he shoots most tournament events and sells his pictures to participants and their families.

Tournament President Jack H. Biggars, for whom Inskeep is shooting an album, said Inskeep “takes some shots that are kind of off the wall--the funny faces people make, the candid shots.”

Later Monday morning, Inskeep moved inside of Tournament House in Pasadena for more group shots. He was alone; none of the media photographers were allowed inside. He called on an official to round up the court. He waited.

“I used to have patience. Oh, well, I won’t be doing this much longer,” he said with a smile.

When the group was assembled, Inskeep, peering from under the ever-present hat, was back in charge. With rapid hand gestures and a final finger wag, he again assembled the ladies into formation, counted and shot--on two.