Blog
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Three Vest Pocket Kodaks
These are “Vest Pocket Kodaks” – of which nearly two million were produced, from about 1912 to the early 1920s. I’ve blogged about one of these cameras before – to sum up, they represent an important step in the miniaturization of cameras, making them the first mass-produced cameras that could actually fit in a vest…
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Chennai’s Walls: an Endless Canvas
Chennai is full of walls. Many of them are marked “stick no bills” – and people will generally abide by that request. But the majority end up being political advertising space. The successive layers of paint upon paint, posters upon posters are accepted as a part of the texture of the city, and are rarely…
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Found Film Friday: Dress-Up Dog
This week’s roll of found film is a roll of 620 panchromatic that not much is known about, other than that it came from an estate sale near Alliance, Ohio. I had quite a bit of trouble loading it into the developer tank. As I was unrolling it in the dark, it was extremely difficult…
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Found Film Friday: New Baby AND a New TV!
Sometimes when I develop these “found” rolls of film I find it kind of sad that their original owners forgot to do so themselves. This is one of those times. The fact that I picked up these rolls on eBay suggests they came from an estate sale, which means the photographers are likely no longer…
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Badrian Street and the Flower Market
Badrian Street or “Budirian Street” as it is painted on the street sign, is the site of Chennai’s old wholesale flower market. While technically, the vendors in what is commonly known as “poo-k-kadai,” sell “wholesale”, their typical clients are ladies who buy less than a kilogram of flowers, typically to be woven into garlands using banana…