The Plaque has been Installed

I had never quite forgotten about the proposed plaque over the past two-and-a-half years, but I had certainly pushed it to the back of my mind.

But just a few days ago, the following photo appeared on one of our community fb pages -- the curator of our museum posing with an historical plaque about the bridge on which it is displayed.

The main photo on the plaque (see below) shows a photographer standing on the bridge taking a photo looking upriver toward downtown. As you can plainly see, it was a railway bridge and was used as such for more than one hundred years and was still used by trains for a few years after we moved here in 2005.

If you choose to click on the following image, it should expand enough so that you can read the description. Among other information, we learn that the base photo was taken in 1905 by a photographer who photographed another photographer taking a photo looking upriver toward town hall. The person who took the photo also shot wide enough to also capture the full scene. I love it. Maybe I should replicate the photo someday.

Back in 2018, the museum curator asked if I would scan the original photo. She already had it in mind to have this plaque made, but she just had a print and would need it scanned in order to make the display. It was a long image which wouldn't fit in my little scanner, so I scanned it in two parts and then put the two halves back together using modern software.

I thought that the photo possibly was not originally sepia but just faded from b&w, so I did some conversion and also cleaned up the image a little although the original is certainly an absolute treasure.

Finally two-and-a-half years later, I was looking at this finished product on fb.

Of course, I had to visit the display in person and asked Sue to take this photo.

I wish that someone had thought to colour correct the inset photo of a train on the bridge. It has a blue tone which doesn't fit with the rest of the plaque, and that gnaws at my photographic sensibilities (said half jokingly and half not). 

Back in 2018, I had done a number of scans for the 200th anniversary calendar for 2019 and used the same photo with that colour cast removed. 

In that calendar, for every month we juxtaposed a photo from the past with one of the present. In this case, the bridge is now part of a recreational trail that wends its way through several counties. On the day that I took the modern photo, we gathered several people who were affiliated with the museum and had them walk along the bridge. The composite depicts past and present use: a train of the past and pedestrians of the present. But you can see that this version of the old train photo does not have that blue cast.

I will leave you with another image from the calendar, this one from the main bridge looking downriver back toward the same railway bridge as above, which is faintly visible in the distance. There was quite a change in land use along the riverbanks over the century or so that separated the two photos.

I enjoyed doing the work of designing the calendar and am now pleased to see that the historical plaque has seen the light of day. In particular, I love the convergence of a modern photographer in 2018 editing a photo by a photographer who himself (likely a he) photographed a photographer way back in 1905. As I mentioned above, it now occurs to me to replicate the photo in the present, but on a very frigid day like today, I will shove the thought to the back of my mind for now.