words, words, words

Posted on April 8, 2019 by Robert

Words, Words, Words

Toronto. I put our first website online over two decades ago on April, 1996. A few years ago, in 2006 or 7, I began an investigation of means to simplify maintenance and updates to our web site so it would be an easier task to transfer responsibilities to a new person. I began looking at various public domain content management systems (CMS) that would allow posts and pages to be written and automatically search them and sort them in chronological order.

While many CMSs were tried out, I settled on WordPress since it had a large following and was easy to use unlike some others that were comprehensible only if you had deep computer knowledge. And in August 2008 I moved us over to WordPress. I created the heading image in Photoshop and I used a WordPress template with a right side bar as a standard. Since WordPress was written in a scripting language, it was also easy to fine tune its look without deep diving into the language. Continue reading →

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first Graflex Journal for 2019

Posted on April 7, 2019 by Robert

Victor Hasselblad – Sweden

Toronto. Ken Metcalf down in North Carolina has issued the latest journal for large camera folk – the 1-19 issue of the Graflex Journal. The lead article is by Davis Strong, a recent member of the PHSC. You may recall last December when Davis joined our show and tell session with his Kalart camera, a short lived competitor of the Graflex.

Lots of great articles in this issue. Just click on the above link and have a read! The masthead photo reminds me of a French expression which paraphrased is “Big man big camera, small man all camera” – definitely the case when the camera is a beautiful Graflex!

Another PHSC member, George Dunbar – you know my friend George of IBM Canada fame – contributed the page of advertisements for the large cameras by Graflex. By the way there is an exhibition on now at York University in Toronto featuring many of George’s photographs.

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April Show in the Big Apple

Posted on April 6, 2019 by Robert

Albert Einstein – 1950

Toronto. Just a brief reminder to join the Daguerreian Society at its New York Photography Fair today, April 6th, 2019. Lots of stuff to see and buy – like this 1950 gelatin-silver print of Albert Einstein.

You can enjoy April in New York City while helping the Daguerreian Society and augmenting your image collection.

 

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walk on the web site

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Robert

an Orb Spider and her web

Toronto. My title of this post is with apologies to musician Lou Reid and Author the late Nelson Algren (Walk on the Wild Side). The world wide web (WWW), conceived by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was presented  in 1989 using the Hyper-text Markup language (HTML). The web was initially designed to share scientific papers amongst universities over the internet. It went live in CERN in 1990 and outside CERN in 1991.

Five years later, in 1996, we had our first web site live. Most members were puzzled. At our February meeting in 1997, I did a talk called “Take a Walk on the Web Site” to introduce computers, the internet and the web to our members who for the most part left computers to their children or grand children.

Today, the web has been inundated by commerce, porn, social sites (Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, etc.), search engines (Google, Bing, Duck-Duck-Go, etc.), and more. It is rapidly becoming passé  especially to the younger generation who are into texting, twittering, and video gaming. Continue reading →

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Moyra Davey Exhibition at the RIC

Posted on April 4, 2019 by Robert

Moyra Davey Photo

Toronto. A Survey exhibition of New York based and Toronto born photographer Moyra Davey (winner of last year’s Scotiabank Photography Award) runs from May 1st to August 4th at Ryerson’s RIC.

If you miss CONTACT elsewhere, at least take in this exhibition at the downtown Ryerson Image Centre.

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Portraits of a Digital Canada

Posted on April 3, 2019 by Robert

Portraits of a Digital Canada

Toronto. On April 24th, an exhibit opens at York University featuring photographs from the IBM Canada Archives which were donated to the university by IBM Canada, incorporated back in 1917.  The images illustrate the technological and social landscape of our country over the past century.

Included are mostly photographs taken by PHSC member George Dunbar. George was the IBM Canada staff photographer from 1957 to 1989. He spoke to the PHSC and showed some of his photographs at our October 2000 meeting. Details of the coming exhibition are included here.

Come out and see the talent hiding amongst our members!

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Anthropocene by Burtynsky today

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Robert

Anthropocene by Burtynsky

Toronto. Until I saw Manufactured Landscapes at TIFF in September 2006, I had never heard or knew about Ed Burtynsky. His large format photographs were an eye-opener. I later saw one of his huge prints at the AGO during a PHSC evening hosted by photography head and PHSC member Maia Sutnik.

Drop by Indigo’s main store at Bay and Bloor at 7 pm today to hear Heather Reisman in conversation with Ed Burtynsky on his latest coffee table size photography book Anthropocene.

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an awarding program

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Robert

Margaret Lansdale’s book

Toronto. In the November-December 1995 (volume 21-3) edition of Photographic Canadiana president Les Jones announced the PHSC Awards program due to begin in 1996. Les was an innovative force in the PHSC with this enduring program being just one of his accomplishments.

In recent times, the Awards program was augmented by an annual thesis award granted to a Ryerson post graduate student for his/her winning thesis in the Masters degree program for Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. The PHSC makes the final choice from the top three theses as selected by Ryerson.

Two of our earliest non-thesis awards went to Margaret Lansdale and Robert Gutteridge for book publication/research. Ashley Cook of the PHSC executive committee administers the awards at the moment.

The thesis winner is usually a speaker at one of our Toronto meetings and his/her thesis is summarized in Photographic Canadiana. A full version is retained by Ryerson. If you or anyone you know is working on an aspect of photographic history – especially Canadian – drop me an email. Details are noted in Awards on our website.

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a flash of colour

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Robert

Brownie Holiday Flash camera using 127 film.

Toronto. In mid last century amateur photography was quite different than today with ubiquitous smartphone cameras. The small camera phase (mincam) was in full swing. Black and White films ruled – colour was very expensive and even slower than B&W. In fact, the slow speed of fast B&W film meant most amateur photos were taken outdoors.

Colour film and flash bulbs were common to professionals but amateurs still favoured B&W films, usually without flash and its relatively expensive one-use bulbs. The manufactures tried to persuade amateurs to move to smaller cameras, colour film, and flash. An example is this 1955 LIFE magazine ad (page 27) for the so called Brownie Holiday Flash camera – simply  a dressed up pre-war Baby Brownie with a flash gun bolted on the side and shutter synchronization. Like all Baby Brownie’s the diminutive camera used 127 film – a slightly wider “35mm” film without the sprocket holes – and a curved film plane to help correct the lens geometrics (curvature of field) just like the far more expensive Minox camera. While the cameras were small, they were just box cameras with a flash gun feature.

A big thanks to George Dunbar for spotting this marvellous advertisement amongst the pages of the July 4th, 1955 LIFE magazine.

 

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timely notice

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Robert

PHSC News – a free newsletter for all fans of photography

Toronto. Journal editor Bob Lansdale created the PHSC newsletter in November 2001 to promote the monthly meetings and other current events between journal printings, plus offering a more economical means to publish articles better suited to colour images. The newsletter is distributed free each month in pdf format both on our web site and to a growing number of folk who have submitted an email address.

To increase distribution, we began to solicit email addresses at our events using a form created by Bob Lansdale. I did the distribution via my own email. At one point the distributions stopped and I contacted Bell Support. The company had unilaterally decided to block all emails exceeding 100 addresses. If a customer wished to exceed the limit, blocks of 100 addresses were allowed every 24 hours. Fortunately Support gave me clearance for up to 5,000 addresses per document. Continue reading →

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