My thoughts and activities in photography, camera collecting, current events, and photographic tips.
As this year draws to a close, I see that I shot hundreds of b&w images, developed well over 100 rolls of b&w film, and have in general, had a lot of photographic fun.
My goals for 2005:
Make more prints - and make them in standardized sizes.
Get material together for a showing
Sell a few prints
Do more portrait work
I hope 2005 will be a more peaceful year all around, but given the current political situation...who knows.
May all of you have a good year!
Last Sunday, Oct. 24, my daughter and I spent the day in Novi, MI at the MiPHS photographica swap. We put in most of our time at a table selling off donated books and magazines that the Society was selling off, and sold them all--generating $300. Everyone got some bargains, for sure. The old 1930s and 40s- era magazines were really fun to leaf through. I picked up a wonderful hard-bound copy of Wright Morris' "Photographs and Words" published by The Friends of Photography.
For more information on Wright Morris:
http://www.photogenesisgallery.com/morris.html
http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/morribib.htm
As collectors and photographers, we delight in going up and own the ailes checking out the various cameras, odd pieces of equipment, and chatting with the sellers and other photographers. Marjorie once again outdid me, though this time I was not really actively buying anything. She picked up another Argus C, An Argus C3, and Argus AF, and a C2. My only Argus purchases were a pretty decent C2 in a case for $5, and an Argus slide viewer and a handful of Argus 126 cameras for $5. What I spent most of my money on was the latest edition of McKeown's Camera Guide, a whopping 1200+ pages and 48,000 cameras...
Definitely worth having, whether you want to gauge the prices for buying/selling, evualuating for insurance purposes, or merely to have your eyes glaze over at the sheer numbers cameras (10,000 illustrations)!
Some shoppers among the treasures.
The variety of cameras at these shows is amazing, since as a photographica show, it caters mostly to small sellers and collectors, not big-time vendors selling new equipment. Digital cameras were not for sale there, and I felt somewhat guilty snapping pics with a digicam...but these are web-destined anyway, not on my wall. The MiPHS swap differs from other camera shows in another way, too -- there are many image vendors there, so if you are looking for tintypes, ambrotypes, Deguerreotypes or old photos, it is a great swap to attend. I never know what I'll see at this swap, and even if I don't buy the odd camera, many sellers understand that it's all about showing off, too. The rare 16mm micro-camera from Universal Camera with gigantic flash reflector (by comparison) was a neat camera that i had read about but never seen. It was pretty cheap, too, but I left it for a Universal collector. Kodak made so many cameras that I can't imagine specializing in those...
A bevy of cheap Kodaks from Alan Bulgrin
One thing missing at these shows are young people. My daughter Marjorie stands out in the crowd becuase she is 16, a female, and is actively interested in silver-based photography as well as collecting certain types of cameras. By large, the crowd at camera shows is over 40 and male. I did note that many of the image collectors there were women. Whereas the hardware collectors are largely male.
We are losing a significant part of our heritage every day and few people seem to realize it. Barns. For you urbanites and suburbanites, this may not mean much. However, to those of us that grew up in the rural areas, a barn is much more than some old building sitting on a farm. Or, as more likely today, an old decrepit building at the edge of a housing development... it pains me to see them falling over. Too expensive to maintain, the owners just let them rot away.
Barns, in all their incarnations, were places where many of us played as kids. Going up into the hayloft where we could search for cats, play hide and seek and get thoroughly messy with hay. There was an old long-unused barn where I grew up (in the Adirondacks) and a rope was still attached to the hay pulley. My friends and I would swing from that thing like we were Tarzan. It's a wonder nobody got hurt. It was also a neat place just to search for old stuff, and the old manure pile behind it was a rich source of compost for our gardens. The barn is still standing, so far as I know, but even then it had probably been abandoned for 20 years.
Now I live in southern Michigan, and a 10 minute drive from my house gets me close to barns. Some are still being used -- either as integral parts of a farming operation, or as nothing more than hay/vehicle storage; others are standing and unused, and each year, many more are leaning and falling over in disuse and disrespect. Still, there is are amazing variety of barns here -- a flagstone barn near Chelsea, one made of glazed tiles near Saline, and of course a lot of wood barns that look like the same group of builders built them 100 years ago or thereeabouts. Most of them are painted red with white accents.
There is a really nice book on Michigan barns, by Mary Keithan - Michigan Heritage Barns. All her shots were done with an 8x10 view camera, and her images have caused me to go out and find some of the barns she has photographed. If you are interested in barn preservation, a number of states have preservation programs.
I saw this barn outside of Hastings, MI a couple of years ago and did not photograph it. This past July, I drove back home from Kalamazoo and took the back roads, and retraced my route to take me past this barn so I could get some shots of it. I think it is a 10-sided barn.
Whether they are regularly maintained or left to the ravages of the elements, barns are great photographic subjects. Interesting shapes, interplay of man/nature and the sometimes beautifully weathered wood can inspire you. Spend some time at one and see what magic it works on you.
Months ago, I bought this Kodak 616 Brownie Special at a resale shop for $5. Interesting camera... even has a little stud to push out so that it can stand on its side for vertical photos. I experimented and ran a roll of 120 inside it by putting little extenders on the 120 spool so that it fit inside the camera. I should have somwewhat panoramic negatives. I used the 616 takeup spool, which meant that the film did not wind precisely lined up. So, I stuck it in an opaque container until I develop it -- maybe later this week.
Meanwhile, I purchased a bunch of old film a few weeks ago, and in it were about a half dozen rolls of 616 Verichrome Pan. The expiration date is late 1960s. What the hell, I might as well load a roll in this camera and see what happens.
