Tall Tripod

[Merg Ross]

I came across this 1938 photograph of my father on location for the J. Walter Thompson ad agency. Looks like he conned his kid brother into helping steady the camera. Probably not the way it is taught in photo school, but certainly innovative.

[Jim Galli]

That's great Merg! Thanks for sharing. He needed a Pontiac station wagon with a platform on the roof I recognize the things that are keeping the table afloat on top of the mud as caps that were used to protect the valves on pressurized cylinders. The tripod he's standing on top of is a cine model that I have still out at work. The name escapes me.

[BarryS]

What a fantastic image. I notice your father is wisely using the beefier tripod to stand on.

[Ralph Barker]

What a great photo, Merg. I see he decided not to use the orange-crate table-leg extensions.

Now, if he had only been able to do this, plus spin a plate on a stick at the same time . . .

[Kirk Gittings]

Probably not the way it is taught in photo school, but certainly innovative.

Do you have any idea what he was photographing?

Weren't we all taught to minimize the use of center columns with VCs?

But you do what you have to do to get the image. Once to get the "perfect angle" I shot a 4x5 while in a climbing harness suspended by a climbing rope, the camera and tripod was strapped sideways with bungy cords to the side of a railing jutting out into atrium space. I wish I could find the picture a local newspaper took of it.

[Merg Ross]

Thanks for the comments. I wasn't sure if posting was appropriate, but I had to laugh when I saw the innovative setup. I should have given credit to the photographer, although he is no longer around to care. He was John L. Corbett of Berkeley, CA. John was often at the house when I was growing up, and had a sense of humor that appealed to my young mind. He was a photographer and also a good lab man. Whenever Brett Weston had 8x10 Ektachrome to be processed, John would do it for him in my father's darkroom.

Kirk, I wish I knew what was being photographed. JWT had many accounts, including Leslie Salt. Leslie Salt had evaporation ponds and a plant in the Bay marshlands so perhaps that was the purpose of the shoot. Just a guess, there is no one left to ask.

Jim, maybe you have that tripod!

[Turner Reich]

http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skag...nsey1-Ace.html


Kinsey use some really tall ones a hundred years ago. Imagine how tall the table was to stand on?

[Bruce Barlow]

"Rats! I wish I were six inches to the left." :-)

[jb7]

That's a fabulous picture-

This one isn't,
but it shows one I rented in London a few years ago-
the ladders are in the lowest position-
they're double extension, so it goes twice as high-
Luckily, I didn't need the extra height...

[Brad Rippe]

Great photograph Merg, Thanks for posting it.

-Brad