One day last week, Sue's daily photo prompt required her using an old camera in a photo. I have older cameras, but they don't look old since they are all of the SLR style. It's too bad that I hadn't kept my earlier cameras, but how was I to know when I was young that I would feel nostalgic about them now.
In the absence of a suitable camera, she did the next best thing and made a collage of old family photos. Starting top left we see her mother and her twin brother That's her grandmother, top right. In the middle we see her mother's school class. Bottom right is her grandmother's class. Finally, at bottom left is a tintype photo that we think might be her great grandmother.
Tintype photographs were first made in the 1850s and remained in use from the 1860s through the early 20th century.A tintype, also known as a melanotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal, colloquially called 'tin' (though not actually tin-coated)
She made the collage early in the day, but when she showed me her work, I knew that I could help her fulfill the project requirement even more. You see, my friend, Bob, is a collector, both by nature and by practice. For example: his CD collection is vast. I knew that he also has a vintage camera collection, so I invited myself over to borrow a few, and I took three back to Sue who then took this photo. Cool, eh?
The camera on the left, the Target Brownie Six-20 being also my mother's camera and, therefore, the first camera that I ever used, Sue decided to photograph it on its own along with empty film cannisters.
Very cool old photos of family and classes taught by Sue's mother and grandmother. I love the attitude of the man in lower left shot...the way many of us felt at being asked to pose for a photo! The old cameras are great, as well as memories of using my own old ones. I've kept just one old camera, the Keystone 8 mm movie camera.
ReplyDeleteI think they were students IN those classes. Not that it matters much to anyone but Sue and family.
DeleteI have a number of old cameras like the ones pictured above. Many years ago I would pick them up at estate auctions because I just like the mechanisms that were needed to operate them and nobody else would bid against me for them, But I probably haven’t seen one for a couple decades now so they must all be in the hands of people like myself and Bob.
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