Golden Era Photographers

[Atomic Age]

On a side note:
WHY can't modern studio portraitists get the same effects that the old photographers did?
I have an old studio portrait of my infant mother, her father, HIS father, and HIS MOTHER! (My great grand-mother).
It's a BEAUTIFUL photo; well composed, well lit, and beautifully developed.
We decided to have my sister and her kids photographed with my mom and my grandfather, in the same poses. It was HORRIBLE! What was the secret, back in the day? Any classic photographers with studios in here, in the Boston area??

-BigLittleTim

So some extent you can get the style of older photographs if you know what your doing. Here are some I shot with in the last year. These were all shot with a digital camera.

[/url] At Her Dressing Table by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] Rj and Adrienne in B&W by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] Syd Divine wearing Able Grable by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] Radio Days by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] Halloween by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] Radio Days by Atomic Age Pictures, on Flickr[/IMG]

Doug

 

[Berlin]

Love love love them!

 

[martinsantos]

There are several factors that make difficult to find the same style of photography nowadays.

The cameras usually are different, and so the lens. Studio portraits were made with large negatives, like 4x5". This change what we would call the "normal" lens. For a 35mm film camera, it is a 50mm lens. For a 6x6cm negative, 75mm. For a 6x9cm, 105mm. All these have exactly the same perspective with the correct type of negative, but the deph of focus will be different. The lens were usually without coating, what can change the aspect.

The panchromatic emulsions at those days had little response to red. And the orthochromatic emulsion (don't see the reds at all) were very popular. Kodak, still on 50s, recomended them for masculine portraits and "character portraits".

The illumination in studios was by photoflood lamps. Now is usually by electronic flash, a very harder light, a somewhat incontrolable.

And, of course, there was a few things that could happen in the darkroom. Like the kind of photo paper. The old Gevaluxe had a special feeling, and with it was possible to get deeply blacks.

I think that nowadays usually the photgs prefer clean, light photos. White backgrounds, lot of light. A kind what in 30s and 40s was called "high key". But in those days the photgs preferred darker photography, with lots of shadows - the "low key".

WHY can't modern studio portraitists get the same effects that the old photographers did?
I have an old studio portrait of my infant mother, her father, HIS father, and HIS MOTHER! (My great grand-mother).
It's a BEAUTIFUL photo; well composed, well lit, and beautifully developed.
We decided to have my sister and her kids photographed with my mom and my grandfather, in the same poses. It was HORRIBLE! What was the secret, back in the day? Any classic photographers with studios in here, in the Boston area??

-BigLittleTim

 

[scottyrocks]

Ansel Adams. I love his landscape work, for which he was primarily known.

 

[Story]

Found this blog, figured it belonged here
http://www.newsphotog.com/tag/will-hudson/

 

[rocketeer]

How about O Winston Link. I doubt he would go down well with the environmental set these days with the amount of electricity used to light his night photo's.

http://www.carolinaarts.com/winstonlink.html

Johnny Tee

 

[Two Types]

Most of the the photographs we see from the period were taken by agency photographers whose identities have been all but lost. Maybe handwritten records exist in old ledgers but in the days of the internet and digital delivery, such details are often lost or ignored.
Some of my favourite work was by the London based agency Fox Photos. Thier photographers produced scenes of daily life in the UK (but predominantly in London) during the 1920s and 1930s. Their archives remain an amazing source for any researcher wanting to get an idea of what the UK looked like in those days. It always made my laugh that they filed their photos of sheep by year. So if you wanted a photo of a black sheep you had to seach through 20 boxes to find what you were looking for. I recall them being asked for a black sheep but not being able to find one. As an alternative the researcher offered the client the best they could find: a shot from the 1930s of a sheep sitting in a chair at a dinner table in a farmhouse, complete with a meal set out in front of it on a plate. The phot was daft, but I've always remembered how much fun it was.

 

[Jeff Londerée]

How about O Winston Link.

His work is amazing. It's precise and exhaustive, but also strikingly beautiful. There is a very nice O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia that I visited several times during my college years there.

 

[RBH]

Arkansas photographer Mike Disfarmer.