photograph

  See picture at the end

Our home is decorated with antiques and collections, as it’s our belief these items should not be hidden away just to possess them. Many items that have a functional purpose, are still used as intended.

But glass negatives do not lend themselves to display. So they sit in a cabinet in the dark room that Wifey uses as her Ebay photo shoot area. I can justify having them and breaking my “Display It If You Collect It” rule, by insisting I’m a savior of old images, rescuing the past with the hope future generations can see these images and understand the incredible work of these early photographers, especially with photos of everyday life with ordinary people.

My last blog showed some of the first batch of seventeen glass negatives I purchased at auction included in a box lot with a tiny spy camera that I was bidding on. I have added to my negative collection selectively over these last fifteen years with an eye toward interesting subjects, not just landscapes or portraits.

Here are some I think you will enjoy seeing. I have reversed the negatives digitally, to show what the printed pictures would look like. Note the rough condition of some. Also study the backgrounds for interesting items, it’s always the details that delight the viewer.

Common portrait of a woman at the end of the century, in a garden, probably wearing a wedding dress.

While early photos of guitar players might be rare, I find the wood stove interesting.

Sitting at her spinning wheel in this sparsely decorated room with the spindly looking plant, our photographer has captured a pensive look in natural window light.

It must have been a snowy winter when this shot was taken,

Our dapper gentleman is loading a shotgun, in this wonderful outdoor photo.

In the same batch, this Milwaukee Country Club Trophy is for Shooting.

Check out this room, with the gentleman sitting at the typewriter in an office chair and using two hands to type. Note! the great stove in the background with a statuette atop, the laundry drying in the corner, wash basket on the floor.

Check out the shoes on this cross dresser, need I say more.

Have you ever seen a better copy of Huck Finn?  Of course Huck didn’t live on this mansion lined street.

Are these the mothers?

And who can resist chickens in a farm yard?

This one is actually a positive print on glass. Our Gang Comedy In The Streets Of Old Milwaukee. Note the Pabst Beer Sign on Tony Rott’s Saloon and dated 1921.

Now lastly, here is what our young lady looks like from the teaser in my last blog.

These glass negatives are found at all antique and collectible venues, but require a watchful eye to spot.

They come in many sizes and I have some in five different configurations from 4-1/4”x 4-1/4” square to 5” x 7” I also have regular negatives and tin type photos in my collection.

Share with us your collection. 

It happened by accident, I had no intention to start a collection of glass photographic negatives.

It was a cool spring day when we went to a farm auction in Hancock, a Central Wisconsin village in a potato and Christmas tree growing area of the state. It was wifey’s sister who called to entice us to come up and attend, with a phone call listing the antiques and furniture to be auctioned .

We arrived early for the viewing and while Wifey headed to the good stuff, including the costume jewelry, I meandered over to the four hay wagons filled with box lots, farm tools, small equipment, household goods, canning jars and Tupperware. I scoured through any box that seemed interesting and discovered a tiny post war Japanese camera, one that I had seen advertised in comic books in my youth. I though it would make a good addition to my camera collection.

As luck would have it, the auction started with the wagon loads and soon came to the box I had interest in, and with no real competition, the box was mine. I plucked my prize out and set the rest of the box next to our folding chairs, while Wifey waited for her desired items to come up. With little interest as the dish sets, glassware and utilitarian items from the farm house were being parceled out to bidders, I peeked to see the rest of my purchase. While other photo “Stuff” was in the box, I was surprised to find a small, lidded container filled with seventeen square glass plate negatives.

To see the images as they would look printed, I have reversed these negatives for your viewing pleasure.

These are some of what I found, produced at the end of the 19^th century, and dated by this photo of schoolchildren holding a sign from the “Lighthouse School, 1897”, one of several in this first lot I purchased at auction that depicts a school and the students.

Who can resist a smile when viewing this picture of a small child. Have you ever seen a tricycle as old as this one before?

One of several portrait pictures in the lot, many of the negatives are of women and appearing to be on farms.

Two rockers, turned leg plant stands and lamp tables, the gas lamps, woodwork on the open stair case and even the pattern of the rug give insight into the household furnishings of that time period. And what’s with the palm tree?

The prize of this lot, a portrait of an African American man.

Wearing a military style uniform, with that hat on the table, it appears to be from a fraternal group. Very popular and abundant in that time period, often started for the mutual insurance benefit of the members.

From these humble beginnings, the collection has grown. With close to one hundred glass negatives, plus glass slides and some regular negatives, I’ll have to take another turn to show you more in my next blog. While I have purchase some in lots, I have become very selective in subject matter, when price is a concern.

Oh yes, the next installment will have the portrait of the young lady at the top, as she appears in a photo, so stay tuned to my continuing saga of “Its a Negative World.”

Today at Collector’s Quest is for the sharp-eyed among you — as a photo collector, a goodly chunk of my time is identifying, to the best of my ability, the origins of a photo. Most of the time, this takes a sharp eye. Here’s some examples, you can play along:

First, we have the cars — they look vintage 1920s to 1930s, which gives us a ‘no earlier than’ mark. Because I have the original negatives, I did my best to read the license plates for a year, but still no luck. However, there IS something in this picture to help identify — here’s an even bigger zoom; it looks like there’s a date in the lower left corner of the plate, but there’s more to check than guessing at a year. I had an idea that these photos must be from the area, so I went over to Google and did a little poking around — the “Elect Benson Governor” ornamental license plate must’ve worked — Elmer Benson was the 26th governor of Minnesota, elected in 1936 and started his term in 1937, giving us a relatively firm date of this photo.

Next one up — a series of related photos:

This one doesn’t require any zooming or tricks: it takes analysis of the group as a whole. The set are all related to the Armour Meat Packing Plant in West Fargo, ND, and a few photos have captions on the back, all talking about construction of a water treatment plant. If there’s anything I know, it’s that stories about early North Dakota don’t show up on Google, so I turned to the local newspaper. In a short story on the history of West Fargo, I found this tidbit: “Armour dumped plant sewage into the Sheyenne River until the late 1930s, when lawsuits filed by farmers living downstream forced the plant to build a sewage disposal facility.” Voila! While it doesn’t pinpoint the year, we’ve got a good idea of when these photos originated (if you’d like to see more sewage plant photos – and I know you do! – I uploaded the whole lot here).

Last up – a postcard:

No, there’s no copyright on the card, it’s unused so there’s no postmark, thus, for the most part we’re out of luck when it comes to the regular telltales. I doubt Mount Rushmore is unfamiliar to anyone, and if you remember your history, construction started in 1927 and ended in 1941…but there’s more to the picture for sharp-eyed analysts to get even more accurate with the date. The Rushmore ‘heads’ were built in a certain order: Washington in 1934, Jefferson in ‘36, Lincoln in ‘37, and then Roosevelt in 1939. Zooming in we can see that Washington is mostly done, Jefferson is well along, Lincoln is still shaping up, but Teddy isn’t anywhere to be found. Looking at the Rushmore timeline, that would place this photo somewhere between 1937 and 1939.

I do enjoy photos for artistic and historical reasons, but I’ve always liked puzzles…while not every photo has enough clues to date it, I can’t just assume there’s no clues there. I put on my Sherlock Holmes hat, find a magnifying glass the size of my head, and give photos a good once-over. Unlike variants in action figures or china patterns, there’s no limit to what might turn up in a photo to identify it’s age…and I like the challenge.

Prior to the digital age, for pretty much every photograph printed, somewhere there’s a negative. Whether it’s your childhood photos or something produced by a Brownie in the forties, there was once a negative produced. On the other hand, the alternative to a movie camera on many a boring family vacation were slides — which consist of the developed positive film mounted in a little frame. In both cases, the fragile and tiny images are not particularly displayable without putting the originals at risk of damage, but they still represent the first-generation image, right off the camera.

Photography fans with a stash of negatives and slides used to rely on the skills of a talented photo-developing lab to produce prints and copies of their collection, potentially handing off some irreplacable images to someone who doesn’t understand the care required to ensure the aging images survive. Today, however, a regular PC and a cheap but specialized scanner can make digital copies of transparent negatives — which can be burned to CD and taken to anyplace that can do digital prints.

Prices have dropped to where a consumer-grade scanner capable of doing negatives can be had for around $100, but people’s accessibility to negative scanners have been limited in the past. Negative scanners were once quite expensive, and some would only accept one size of film — and people often didn’t know that many consumer-grade scanners actually have add-ons for scanning film. The key to scanning a semi-transparent medium, like a negative or slide, is ‘transmissive’ scanning. The usual method of scanning is like a photocopier, where the sensor that scans the page and the light source are on the same side — or ‘reflective’ scanning. The glossy coating of a negative makes ‘reflective’ scanning akin to flash photography in a mirror — lots of light, little image. ‘Transmissive’ has the light source behind the object to be scanned, like a movie projector, so the imaging sensor sees the image on the film, and not the film itself.

Many scanners have options for transmissive scanning, ranging from a small add-on that plugs in to the scanner and rests on the glass, to replacement covers for flatbed scanners. My scanner, a UMax Astra 4450 originally bought for scanning slide film, was specially designed with a transmissive light source built into the cover. It doesn’t span the entire scanning surface, so it comes with a template to help line up the negative. The 4×6 source in the scanner is large enough for all but the larger of glass negatives.

Having the light source on the back means that nearly any semi-transparent image can be scanned — glass negative plates, movie film, slides, large-format negatives. Anything that can fit in the scanner’s tramissive area will work.

Because of the wide variety of media, a little experimentation is needed to make sure it works. If you have any familiarity with developing black-and-white photos, using a transmissive scanner is the digital version of using an enlarger…and that always required a little trial-and-error to fine tune exposure and quality.

Much like an enlarger, you’ll need to do some calculation to get your image’s size correct. A scanner’s DPI, or ‘dots-per-inch,’ is a measure of image quality: the more ‘dots’ per inch, the better the print will be. For example, my 4 megapixel camera produces an approximately 400 DPI 4×6 photo. If I were to put a 4×6 photo on my scanner, and set it for 400 DPI, the scan should be of similar size and quality to my digital camera. However, do not forget that a negative is far smaller than the photo, while the scanner’s DPI is a measure of what’s actually being scanned on the glass. A 35mm frame is a little under an inch-and-a-half across, or 1/4 the width of a 4×6 photo. To produce a digital image of similar quality to a 4MP digital camera, the negative will have to be scanned at 4 x 400dpi, or 1600dpi. If you were to scan at 400dpi, you’d get a 400×600 image, which is far too grainy for anything but emailing or posting in a webpage. Scanning a 35mm frame at 600dpi or 800dpi should be the minimum level of quality to get a reasonable photo print, and most consumer-level scanners can do this or better. Don’t think that Photoshop can work magic: if the scanner was set at too low of quality, increasing the image’s size in Photoshop only makes the graininess bigger.

My examples are negatives from the 1930s in two sizes: 3-1/2″ x 2-1/2″ and 2-3/4″ x 1-3/4″. I’m scanning both at 600dpi, which should produce a relatively high quality scan, given the age and quality of the negatives. The negative is placed on the scanner flatbed, in the region of the template, the cover is closed, and the ‘transmissive-negative’ option is selected. When the scanner passes across the negative, taking in the light that passes through the negative, the software will invert the brightness, producing a positive image. If I were to scan a color slide — which is not negative — my scanner has the option to just scan, without inverting. Once I have the image in Photoshop, I can adjust and fine tune the levels and contrast to my tastes, and then save it. After I have my settings figured out to produce a good image, the process becomes quicker. Because I do the converting in the comfort of my home, the negatives are ar far less risk for damage or loss, compared to delivering them to a photo studio for enlarging.

Once you have the image scanned, the negatives can be returned to their acid-free, cool, dry storage, and you’re left with a high-quality digital version. Burn it to a CD, and even Wal-Mart can print them for you on high-quality photo paper. Upload them to Flickr and show off your collection. If your photos are family or historic, use them in a website devoted to the photo’s subject. These negatives and slides, once hidden away for their own safety, can now be reproduced and shared without putting them at significant risk of damage.

Short notes:

• Transparent images are scanned using a ‘transmissive’ technique, with the light behind the image. Scanners can be purchased with it built-in, or added as an option, depending on the manufacturer.
• DPI applies to the scanner’s surface, not the actual image. Calculate the quality of the print you’d like to make, and set the scanner appropriate for the negative’s size.
• Like hand-enlarged photos of old, some experimentation may be needed to get proper exposure, contrast, and color.
• With a little work, those negatives and slides can be shared without putting the originals at risk.

In considering the limited space we have in our house (two adult collectors and children we are grooming for such activities), I’m reconsidering something I’ve not previously given much thought to personally before: Postcards.

In general I’m a paper (ephemera) lover, but postcards, with their expected size and their relatively common themes never appealed much to me before. Sure, I have saved a few antique photograph portrait postcards because I must adopt these orphans, and I’ve coveted some rather rare risqué postcards — but price kept those safely out of reach. But honestly, I didn’t collect postcards. Until now.

Hubby may say that he’s finally won me over to his love of postcards, but I’m falling in love with postcards for more practical reasons — their size and versatility.

Their small size means I can (too) easily rationalize starting another collection because even with a hundred of them, I am only adding another book to my (already overflowing) shelves. And it’s easy to do because postcards cover unlimited categories.

Collect vintage lingerie? Bam! There are postcards with those images. Holidays? Those too.

Feline fancier? Here you go, plenty of cute kittens and cats. Or maybe you’re a dog person? No problem. There are postcards of dogs and puppies, puppies with kittens — even postcards featuring dogs and lingerie. (There may even be postcards with dogs wearing lingerie; I didn’t look.)

Collect local history? Want to collect antique cars, but have limited funds and space? Interested in say, the history of nursing? With postcards, it’s done, done and done.

When at auctions or estate sales, don’t hesitate to ask if you can get a bulk discount. Offer to buy all the cards for one lower-per-card price and even if you have postcards in poor condition, in areas you are not interested in, or even duplicates, that’s OK. You can re-sell or trade those with another collector. (And if they are really damaged, even folks who create altered art may be interested!)

You can’t go wrong with a box of old postcards.

Even those with more modern interests can find postcards to interest them.

There are postcards for film, music, books, television, radio; for action figures and toys; postcards for consumers and trade postcards; even postcards for postcards.

Hubby recently grabbed me this postcard from OfficeMax because I love the ‘Rubberband Man,’ Eddie Steeples, who is now “Crab Man” on My Name Is Earl. (That could be worth something someday!)

In fact, postcards are likely in your mailbox right now. (Go look. I’ll wait.)

Once you start looking at all the possibilities on the small 5 x 3.5 (or a tad larger) inches, you suddenly see that’s a lot of real estate there… Even if it takes up a small amount of room.

Storing postcards is easy. Simply get some binders, some postcard pages or sleeves to protect them, and not only do you have a nifty collection but one you can both easily store and show off without risking damages (even with the little fingers of children).

Boxes & binders also make for easy organization if you end up with more than one theme. And this is one collection you won’t need to dust.

For more on postcards:

History of Postcards

Glossary of Postcard Terms

Postcrossing, The Postcard Crossing Exchange