Category Archives: History of Photography

“Come, my Lord Bishop, I will show you the way to Heaven!”

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OK, I admit it. I was supposed to go to Texas for the eclipse, but decide in the end that the weather forecast was too dismal and stayed home. I should have gone! Is Spain next? So i spent the afternoon with dear friends photographing the partial eclipse in Sudbury with my SeeStar 50s, see Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1 – First eclipse contact, April 8, 2024 SeeStar 50 s (c) DE Wolf 2024
Figure 2 – Eclipse Maximum, April 8, 2024. SeeStar 50s (c) DE Wolf 2024

Figure 3 shows a picture of the SeeStar 50s. This is a brilliant device and the cutting edge of what we may be pretty sure is a surging revolution in amateur astronomy. I’ll have more to say about this little robotic telescope in the future. But right now I just wanted to point out the here, resting on my dining room table, we have a basic altazimuth telescope system. A yoke enables the scope to move up and down in altitude, while a rotatable platform enables movement along the azimuth.

Figure 3 – The SeeStar 50 s “Smart Telescope” by ZWO. (c) DE Wolf 2024.

It connects wonderfully with Sir William Herschel‘s (1738-1822) design of his great “forty foot telescope” in 1744. Famously, George III led the then Archbishop of Canterbury into the tube saying, “Come, my Lord Bishop, I will show you the way to Heaven!” For my friends who gently chide me how amateur astronomy appears to be nine parts tinkering and adjusting and one part actually observing, I will point out that Sir William’s telescope was “down” most of the time. There were two speculum mirror, the main one weighing about a ton, and these were constantly being swapped out so that the other could be polished. Nevertheless, the “forty foot telescope” was instrumental [sic] in the discovery of  Enceladus and Mimas, the 6th and 7th moons of Saturn.

Figure 4 – Sir John Herschell’s first photograph 1839
showing the altazimuth mount of his father;s “40 foot Telescope” in the public domain By John Herschel – http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/features/ephotos/nphoto3.htm#photo, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7833750

There is an interesting connection with photography. Sir John Herschel, William’s son is famous both as a pioneer of Astronomy and of Photography, His earliest photograph was of the frame of the altazimuth mount of his father’s “40 ft telescope.” This is shown in Figure 4.

One will, of course, wonder what became of this important instrument in the history of science. As a good father Sir John worried about his daughters (see Figure 5) getting hurt playing in the ruins of the giant frame and he had the structure dismantled in 1840 as a safety precaution.

Figure 5 – Herschel’s daughters Constance Anne, Caroline Emilia Mary, Margaret Louisa, Isabella, Francisca (“Fancy”) and Matilda Rose, 1860s, albumen print, unkn. photographer (NPG x44697) in the public domain.

The Proud Merchant

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Figure 1 – The Proud Merchant by Charles Dana Gibson c1904

A few weeks back, I was exploring an antique barn in Newburyport, MA, when I came upon this print by Charles Dana Gibson 1867-1944 entitled the “The Proud Merchant.” Gibson was, of course the artist famous of the turn of the (twentieth) century Gibson Girl – the ideal beauty of the age. I indeed, love these upper class babes with their tight waists and long, flawless, and elegant necks. I have a photograph of my grandmother as a “Gibson Girl” with her lovely shirtwaist.

Dana also is famous for street scenes and faces. Figure 1 falls into that category. The illustration is from Colliers c1904 and depicts a “Proud Merchant” having a photograph taken in front of his shop. It teaches us a lot about portrait photography in an age when it was still scarcely available and therefore intriguing to an assembled crowd – a big event! Note, of course the camera bag, the tripod, the black cloth, and the assistant ready with the next plate for the view camera. What is interesting to me is the evolution of the camera’s form that begins perhaps with the camera obscura. It is essentially a box with a lens, and if you think closely has not changed that much over the years, except perhaps for the polaroid instant cameras, where the goal was to make something “futuristic.” What could be better than a mountain of failed and sticky instant failures at $1.00 a pop all over the floor?

I think of my iPhone as the descendant of the view camera of old. I felt the same way about my father’s Ciroflex 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 twin lens reflex. The act of setting the composition is so much more thoughtful than with today’s DSLRs. Both cellphone cameras and DSLRs bear with them a sense of the photograph costing one nothing, unless you factor in the growing entropy of the universe. In 1904 creation of a photograph was a precious and time consuming process. Yet, Eastman had introduced the Kodak Brownie in 1888 and the democratization of photography had already begun.

Alien worlds within our own #1

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Figure 1 – Alien worlds within our own, #1 – fallen tree. (c) DE Wolf 2021

Other worlds and other realities are all around us. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, at least until you sort out exactly what you are looking at. Such is the case with this photograph that I took this past weekend. It seemed a very alien environment. as if one were on a different planet. Perhaps to the termites and to the blue-green molds that  felled this giant tree it is our world and reality, not theirs, which are alien.

There is, perhaps, an allegory in this image. We have but one planet that we share. But there are so many insular cultures, who appear so alien to one another, and who are so quick to shout “other!”

 

Soul of the blasted pine

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Figure 1 – Annie Brigman’s self-portrait “Soul of the Blasted Pine” (1908). In the public domain because of age.

It is truly amazing and awe-inspiring how we walk around with all of these images stored inside our brains; so that we are ever ready to say, “This reminds me of that.” And, of course, the best images appeal to or summon up themes from the collective psyche and mythology of humankind. That causes not only an association but a resonance with other people’s associations.

One such image, for me, is Annie Brigman’s magnificent “Spirit of the Blasted Pine,” a self portrait reproduced here as Figure 1. It evokes the quintessential forest or tree spirit released from the bough of a broken tree. It is magnificent. Brigman and her haunting images are always with me.

The other day I was at a friend’s house and saw this natural sculpture – tree roots imprisoning a large stone. The association with Brigman’s image was, to my mind, immediate and vivid.

Figure 2 – Tribute to Annie Brigman’s “Soul of the blasted pine.” (c) DE Wolf 2021.

Celebrating women’s suffrage

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Figure 1 – Suffragette who had survived prison being taken home. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the nineteenth amendment. How poignant that one hundred years later we are locked in a titanic struggle for the franchise with democracy itself in the balance! How striking that the Resident at a celebration of the nineteenth amendment at the White House today took the occasion to insult Michele Obama, the most popular woman in the United States, and he did it with this usual approach, if you cannot say something articulately, say it inarticulately three times.

Peaceful protestors, seeking fundamental human rights, being dragged off in the streets at the President’s orders. We have seen it all before. 

Whisper – each Christmas  the U. S. Postal Service delivers ~ 500 million pieces of mail. The hypothetical 316 million pieces of mail associated with universal mail-in voting pales by comparison. 

Whisper – this is the same U. S. Postal Service that the Trump administration trusted to send out the ~ 139 million stimulus checks this past spring.

The government sought to intimidate and humiliate suffragettes in the early 20th century. Many were imprisoned and endured dark, unsanitary, rat-infested conditions and contaminated food. They were manhandled, forced to perform prison labor, and intentionally incarcerated with the general prison population. After their mail was withheld they went on hunger strikes and were brutally force-fed through nasal tubes. Figure 1 shows one such victim finally released from prison. THEY FOUGHT FOR OUR LIBERTIES! So, indeed, remember the women, who fought for the suffrage and VOTE!

Burned in memory

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Figure 1 – Students gather at the Brandenbourg Gate as the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain fall, November 9, 1989. Attribution

I think we cannot let the day go by without remembering a major photographic moment that is burned into our memories. Thirty years ago today, all around the world, we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lifting of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain.” This is, perhaps, one of those generational moments that define a us in our age, in holding it in a collective memory that separates us from the next generation. It speaks so vividly of the power of the visual image and how it can seize us.

It is an antique image, from when America was great, when we were engaged globally in the defense of liberty and democracy. Most significantly we were filled with the vision of what despots hated the most in us, “American Exceptionalism.”Perhaps we shall be once more.

American Gothic

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Figure 1 -Discarded antique belt wheels at the historic Damon Mill in Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

This past week, I made two photographic transitions.

First, I upgraded my failing IPhone 6 to an IPhone  XSMax. The 6 represented a major advance in cell phone camera technology, and the 7 even more so.  With the XSMax comes the best camera until, I suppose the XI. There are three cameras on the iPhone XS Max, two in the back and one in the front for selfies and facial recognition. Significantly for those of us who do a lot of post-processing, the dual rear cameras are at 12 megapixels, which some will recall was the transition point when digital started to be equivalent to film in resolution. The lenses are f/1.8 for the wide-angle camera and f/2.4 for the 2x “telephoto.” Let’s put the word telephoto in quotes, for photography buffs this is more of a “normal” lens. But I hasten to mention the fantastic capabilities of these cameras in terms of close-up and wide-angle ability. For me, there is no reason to carry any other cameras but my phone’s and my DSLR.

Of course, a lot of the value lies in the Artificial Intelligence. the AI, in the algorithms. Yes that again, friends!  This is not your father’s camera, or at least not my father’s. This is “computational photography” and has a new feature called ‘Smart HDR’ where the phone begins capturing images as soon as you open the app not just when you push the shutter. Each image is a stream of images, one being chosen as “best.” But, I hasten to add you can change that later as you use the camera’s post-processing algorithms. By combining images the camera optimizes lighting and in the process avoids overexposure and shutter lag. While the images produced are only 8 bit per color plane, in my experience so far, the histograms are spot on, filling the dynamic range perfectly. Well enough said for now, I am having fun, and getting fabulous shots.

And as an example of image quality, I am including as Figure 1 a sepia toned black and white image of discarded antique belt wheels at the historic Damon Mill in Concord, MA taken with my IPhone XSMax and very minimally modified in Adobe Photoshop. I think the subject matter fitting. In its day, in the mid to late nineteenth century, these waterworks that, electricity free, powered the clothing industry of the Industrial Revolution were the height of technology, just as these new cellphone cameras are today.They are now discarded ornaments, which truly makes one wonder what is next!

Second, at the urging of a wise friend, I have started playing with the app PRISMA. This stylizes your images in various painterly fashions. According to Venture Beat, “PRISMA’s filter algorithms use a combination of convolutional neural networks and artificial intelligence, and it doesn’t simply apply a filter but actually scans the data in order to apply a style to a photo in a way that both works and impresses.” If you’re like me this tells you NOTHING. But the point is that these are not simple filters but AI neural networks applied to image modification. They are a lot of fun to use, and when you have a photo, which lacks a certain umph, you can often “jazz” it up with the PRISMA app. It is important, I believe, that the goal here is to achieve a beautiful and artistically pleasing image. Artistic photography is intrinsically nonlinear. Strict intensity and even spatial relationships are fundamentally lost in the processing.So there is nothing wrong with using modern image processing techniques to enhance the effects.

More importantly both the iPhone camera transition and the PRISMAand related apps transition truly represent a new world for the photograph, one where, along with the photographers brain, the camera itself has a brain that works in tandem with you. Of course, the beginnings of all of this rest historically with the development of autofocus and autoexposure back in the seventies. But really, it is a new world energized by neural networks and artificial intelligence. You may have wondered how I can write a blog about photography and futurism in the smae breath. Now you know!

As an illustration of this, Figure 2 shows The Old Salem District Courthouse in the Federal Street District of Salem, Massachusetts reflected in the window of a condominium. The scene struck me as ever so Gothic. I wasn’t quite satisfied with the original image. However, I was able to accentuate this feeling of medieval  Gothis as well as to brighten up the tonality with the PRISMA Gothic filter.

Figure 2 – American Gothic, reflections of the Salem District Courthouse in a condominium window, modified using the PRISMA Gothic filter, Salem, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

The color of war on the homefront

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Figure 1 – Jack Delano women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room at C. & N.W. Rail Road  in Clinton, Iowa. From the US LOC and in the public domain because it was taken by a government employee.

Many of you, I suspect, have seen Peter Jackson’s triumph “They Shall not Grow Old.” And if you haven’t, you definitely should. It demonstrates the power of color in our visual comprehension. It colorizes the First World War, The War to End All War. And since we know full well from antique and glorious autochromes what the war looked like in color, we are amazed and, quite frankly, mesmerized indifferent to all the gore..

Quite randomly, I stumbled today upon Figure 1 from the collection of the Library of Congress and featured as part of its “Women’s History Month Series.” The image was a standard United States Office of War Information image by the great Jack Delano. People of my generation do not need to be told that it is a digital scan of a Kodachrome transparency. It screams of Kodachrome, with its vivid colors ever leaning towards a pastel palette.

The image shows women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room at C. & N.W. Rail Road  in Clinton, Iowa. More specifically it shows Marcella Hart at left, Mrs. Elibia Siematter at right. We have the definite feeling that the image should be in black and white, as were so many images of the day and genre. Two elements thrust us into the moment. The first is the color, the Kodachrome color. The second is the everyday quality the emphasizes our commonality with these women. There is the orange wrapped in cellophane. There is the thermos bottle. But most noticeable of all is the simple fact that none of the ladies in the image look back at us. The photograph is a perfect candid, it captures, purely and simply, a moment of intimacy between the women, as if the camera wasn’t there at all.

The Baker Street Irregulars

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Fogure 1 – Children carrying Christmas greens. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

In my searches for images of Christmases past I came across the photograph of Figure 1. It shows a group of London children, with delighted faces, carrying holly and mistletoe. The picture was from 1915 so both Edwardian and during the First World War. In that context there is a lot going on – poor children, grubbily dressed, both still with happy faces.So it isn’t a charming little image of Christmas in the “good ol’ days,” but rather a rawer image of Christmas past.

To me it is most reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars.

     “At this moment there was a loud ring at the bell, and I could hear Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and dismay.
     “By heavens, Holmes,” I said, half rising, “I believe that they are really after us.”
     “No, it’s not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.”
     As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street…. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number, taller and older than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little scarecrow.”
    
     Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of the Four (1890)

As a result, we can see this as a kind of triangle of fiction and reality. Conan Doyle is writing fiction, but describing what he sees and what is familiar. The photographer is making a social statement, projecting what he perceives to what we see. And finally we, as viewers of the image, complete the triangle. We relate it back to the fictional characters that are part of the collective thought of generations of Sherlock Holmes readers. And we recognize, through Dickens, that life was not always so lovely.