Year: 2014
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Found Film: The Alberts – Two Weddings
For the last couple of months, I have been sharing photos believed to have been taken by Raymond Albert, circa 1950. This latest post shares the photos he took of two different weddings, a few years apart. All of the “conclusions” I have reached about who is pictured is pure guesswork, based on who is…
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Camera Test: Ansco Shur-Shot Jr
The 1948 Ansco Shur-Shot Jr. box camera, a simple little contraption of mostly sheet metal and cardboard, uses a basic design that has not really changed much over 50 years. The only real “upgrades” from box cameras you might see from the early 1900s are the plastic winding knob, the bright finders on the top…
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Found Film: Albert Family Outings
A couple of additional rolls this week from the series of photos taken by Raymond Albert in and around Rumford, Maine in the late 1940s and early 1950s (see “Introducing the Alberts”). This looks like spring and summer, 1952, in which the family takes a trip to the beach, and also some nice shots from a…
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Found Film: The Alberts at Christmas
This is another post in the series on the photos taken by Raymond Albert in and around Rumford, Maine in the late 1940s and early 1950s (see “Introducing the Alberts”). I’m guessing this roll is from Christmas, 1951. It’s always interesting to see what’s under the Christmas trees from yesteryear. The top photo comes from…
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Camera Test: No. 1A Folding Pocket Kodak, R.R. Lens Type
Remember the No. 1A Folding Pocket Kodak, R.R. Lens Type? With such a distinctive name, who could forget it? Not like the cameras nowadays – all DSC-something-cybersomething-shot-pix – they all blur together. Naming conventions were different in the early 1900s. Over the course of half a century, Kodak only made around 50 cameras with the…
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Red Shutter Leica: To Repair or Not to Repair?
Hundreds of dollars spent on a collectible vintage Leica, and it doesn’t work. What to do? Naturally, take it apart! This is the camera I picked up on eBay. it’s a Leica IIIc, made in 1941. I thought I’d gotten a pretty good deal – my McKeown’s guide lists this particular model as being worth…
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Found Film: The Alberts, Summer and Fall 1951
The story of Raymond Albert’s family, as told through his lost and found photos, continues as we enjoy a late summer in Rumford, Maine around 1951-ish. There is no real theme to tie these photos together – they come from three different rolls, each of which only had a few turn out well for some…
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Big Photo Contest Win!
No, it wasn’t me. Although I did get an “honorable mention.” We used to tease my wife Anne over her insistence on using a camera that had long surpassed its obsolescence date. Until one day it was mysteriously found inside the (clothes) washer, and she was forced to upgrade her photographic equipment. And for the last…
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Varanasi: The View from Mother Ganga
Varanasi, India is, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Also known as Benares, Banaras or Kashi, the city’s identity is inseparable from the River Ganges, along whose left bank the city of just over 1 million residents is nestled. If you visit Varanasi, one of the experiences not to be missed is…
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Found Film: The Alberts Go Fishing
It’s time to share another batch of Raymond Albert’s photos. In this batch, Raymond (shown above) goes on a fishing trip with some friends and family. I’m not sure where this lake is – probably in Maine, but there are so many… Here a shot of the inside of the boat: Fishing fashions of circa-1950:…
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Camera Test: Ansco Readyflash
The Ansco Readyflash – so named because it’s “ready for flash” (but I don’t have one) via two connectors on the camera – is about as simple a box camera as you could probably come up with. It’s made of sheet metal and plastic, and takes 8 exposures on a roll of 620 film, 6…
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Found Film: The Alberts and the Korean War
We met the Alberts a few weeks ago, when I introduced Raymond and his family, whom we know from a box of about 20 developed rolls of film Raymond left behind recently. This installment appears to have been taken around 1950, and daughter Louise is about 4-5 years old. I’m guessing the Korean War is…
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Varanasi: Walking the Ghats
In previous posts I’ve talked about the “ghats” of Varanasi. People keep asking me, “What exactly IS a ghat, anyway?” Basically it’s a series of steps leading down to the river. We spent hours walking along the ghats. And not just because walking parallel to the stairs is much easier than walking up and down…
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Andy Shepherd’s Camera
The Shaw-Harrison company manufactured these simple, bakelite cameras from 1959 to 1972 in a variety of colors – along with an identical model called the Valiant 620. I picked this one up on eBay for a few bucks because it was advertised as still containing a roll of film. When it arrived, I discovered that…
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Varanasi: In and Around Town
There is an endless number of interesting faces, places and scenes to photograph in Varanasi. Last week I shared some photos of the ghats along the river – where most of the tourists hang out; but in this city of 3 million and its environs you can go just about anywhere in the city and…
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Found Film: Introducing the Alberts
Raymond Albert was born on March 20, 1926 to Willa/Vila/Ovila (depending on the source) and Annie (Chenard) Albert, who were born in 1892 and 1895, respectively, in Canada and came separately to Maine as teens. According to the 1940 census, at age 14, he and his family lived at 318 Waldo Street, in Rumford, Maine…
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Death along the Ganges
As Americans – like most “Westerners” – we are for the most part, relatively isolated from death. Not that we don’t have people close to us dying – we just don’t deal with the specifics. I reflected on this just a few weeks ago, when we lost our longtime family dog in India, and suddenly had…
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Varanasi by Night
We finally had the opportunity to visit Varanasi, India – also known as Benares or Kashi – one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism and Jainism, and also important in the development of Buddhism. Varanasi, a city of 3 million on the western bank of the Ganges River, is said to be one of…
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Project Underwood: Typewriter Restoration
One evening about a year ago, my (younger) daughter and I were checking out typewriters on eBay. We share an interest in “retro” machines (this is how my camera craze started, and her last Christmas present was a record player), and inexplicably, we both wanted – needed – a typewriter. So we both picked one out…
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Found Film Friday: Only Briefly Misplaced
Every week I post a roll of “found” film that has been forgotten in someone’s attic or inside a camera, often for half a century. You never know what you’re going to end up with though. With the old spools, it’s pretty clear that the pictures will be pretty old, and often yield a few…
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It’s 1914 and Everyone’s a Photo Critic
One hundred years ago this month, much of the world was at war. But in the United States – which would eventually mobilize 4 million military personnel – public opinion in 1914 was still firmly on the side of neutrality. This was very evident thumbing through this 100-year-old issue of “The Camera” magazine, published in Philadelphia.…
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Flower Collage
Here’s a fun photo project…and an idea I stole from my wife (I explained to her that I was improving on her idea – it didn’t go over well). Go find a green space and see how many flowers you can discover. Or bugs. Or whatever. And then make a photo collage out of them.…
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Found Film Friday: Cowboys and RVs
It’s been a slow week for photography and blogging. Last weekend we went to photograph and film the annual Ganesha Chathurti immersion of Ganesh idols in the sea. I got some great video, but unfortunately can’t locate the video card I recorded it on. So the only new post for this week is the weekly…
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Found Film Friday: Country Outing
This week’s roll of “found film” came to me from near Binghamton, New York, where the Ansco company was located from the mid-1800s to around 1980. The spool was covered in rust, and the backing paper was stuck to the film so badly that I was unable to remove large strips of paper. So I…
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A Brief History of Photography…as of 1912.
I have a few old camera magazines – about a century old. It’s fun to flip through them every now and then and consider how much has changed…and in some cases, how little has changed…in the field of photography. The article below, from the December 1912 issue of “The Camera” magazine (cover above), recounts the…