{"id":31095,"date":"2025-03-29T01:03:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T05:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=31095"},"modified":"2025-03-29T21:20:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T01:20:39","slug":"watch-da-birdie-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/watch-da-birdie-2\/","title":{"rendered":"watch da birdie!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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tweet-tweet<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. In the days when emulsions were slow, decent photos needed a few seconds of absolute stillness by the subject. To help, studios added a mechanical ‘bird’ to their camera and for portraits (especially of children) the photographer would exclaim “watch the birdie” before making an attempt at capturing a good, sharp, ‘likeness’.<\/p>\n

At each PHSC fair, our late editor, Bob Lansdale, collected interesting items from the exhibitors and brought them back to his ‘mini-studio’ to be photographed for a journal article. At our fall fair ‘way back in 1996, he included a typical mechanical bird as shown here.<\/p>\n

“A working t<\/i>w<\/i>eet<\/i><\/span>y-<\/i><\/span>bird for $130 from Bruce Attfield <\/i><\/span>(<\/i><\/span>m<\/i><\/span>aker <\/i>un<\/i><\/span>known<\/i><\/span>)” <\/i>is the cut-line written by Mr Lansdale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Join us at our 2025 events (see PHSC EVENTS at the right). You may not find a ‘birdie’ but you will find lots of other unusual items, some of which will complement your collection!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. In the days when emulsions were slow, decent photos needed a few seconds of absolute stillness by the subject. To help, studios added a mechanical ‘bird’ to their camera and for portraits (especially of children) the photographer would exclaim … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[738,909,398,400,348],"class_list":["post-31095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-accessory","tag-birdie","tag-camera","tag-fair","tag-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31095"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31115,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31095\/revisions\/31115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}