Monthly Archives: August 2021

eye of the storm

Posted on August 31, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. It was ‘the best of times and the worst of times‘ between the world wars. After the first war, pent-up demand blossomed into unprecedented wealth in the first decade, followed by the worst depression ever in the next (world … Continue reading →

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Japan c1908 in photos

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. Our President, Lewko Hryhorijiw, sent me this link from Helen Teager. The photographs are a selection of the work by the German-American photographer, Arnold Genthe, held in the Library of Congress. The photos were taken when Genthe spent a … Continue reading →

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I shot an arrow up in the sky …

Posted on August 29, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. WW2 had ended three years earlier and the world was getting back to normal. Just a year before this December 1948 ad appeared, Ansel Adams took a photograph of mountain climbers on  the top of Yosemite Park’s famous ‘Lost … Continue reading →

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one born every minute …

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. … or so Barnum is supposed to have said.  The Bolex was the Leica or Contax of the amateur movie crowd. It was a high end camera made in Switzerland by Paillard. Interestingly, Bolex was originally not a Paillard … Continue reading →

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going ’round the bend

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. This digital image was recently posted to instagram and shows a ‘selfie’ taken by someone hanging onto the back of a TTC Subway train.  Very dangerous! The photographer could have fallen on the third rail or fallen and been … Continue reading →

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it’s a bird, it’s a plane … it’s a camera?

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. Some collectors specialize in novelty cameras such as this old Pentax RS1500 with the Superman skin (image posted by Andy Khouri April 14, 2011 and once seen on the ‘Comics Alliance‘ website. Since digital photography has been around well … Continue reading →

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way way back focus

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. When COVID-19 arrived in Toronto the spring of 2020, we closed down daily person to person venues as demanded by the city. Our editor at the time, the late Bob Lansdale, felt we needed to get something out to … Continue reading →

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easel come, easel go

Posted on August 24, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. When film photography was a popular hobby last century, amateurs used a darkroom and enlarger to crop and adjust the final print size. To focus the enlarger, and hold the photographic paper flat, the photographer would often use an … Continue reading →

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cheap is how I feel

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. Post war, the camera industry exploded with pent-up demand. Federal in Brooklyn was mainly known in photographic circles for their enlargers (I had one). Their enlargers were cheaply made and cheaply sold. Around 1948, the company decided to do … Continue reading →

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darker dags

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. The NYT article is headlined, “Smithsonian Acquires Rare Photographs From the First African American Studios“. The example Ambrotype image shown here was augmented by a few dashes of colour painted in by hand before the glass plate was carefully … Continue reading →

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