https://www.cbsnews.com/news/explore...-griffin-post/
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Uniced? Thanks for posting - very interesting! For those who enjoy landscape photography, Washburn's book called "Mountain Photographs" is well worth getting. Good reproductions. Another great book of aerial photographs is called "Aerial Photographs," by William Garnett. His images are more abstract than Washburn's.
Not an aerial camera, but Mummery's camera famously melted out of an Everest glacier 75 years later. And John, you no doubt recall how a missing WWII fighter melted out Mendel glacier awhile back, right up there beside Mt Darwin. Now the mere existence of that glacier is right on the brink.
As for Washburn, he is right up there with Garnett as one the best aerial photo-composition makers ever. But now, if you want outdoorsy attention, it's all about cliff-jumping in a bat-suit, wearing a GoPro camera, with the very last thing seen being a big red splat. That opportunity simply wasn't available to those like Washburn, who mastered black and white film instead.
Interesting how the cache is going to help glacier research
Yeah... like figuring out everything is going to melt out pretty soon, since little or none of a glacier will be left. Some of the ones I set foot and ice axe upon as recently as twenty-five years ago are now already totally gone. Another 25 year from now, not a single glacier in the US Rockies, Sierra Nevada, or even Alps in Europe might still remain, at the rate things are melting. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, if you can excuse an unfunny solemn pun.
The article did not say why this is the "Holy Grail" can someone explain?
Probably because Bradford Washburn is a legend of aerial photography, and of even Alaska mountain activity itself. He used all kinds of cameras, including some massive precision aerial ones.
He was kinda baked-in to the core group of Natl Geographic explorers as well as the scientific community. But from an artistic standpoint, his shots speak for themselves.
The first aerial camera is somewhat important in some sense, I would imagine.
It isn't even the first. Decades after the first.Quote:
Originally Posted by mdarnton
Wait a second, they had aerial cameras in the first WW, and were used from balloons/kites earlier... First!?!! ;(
Steve K
The linked article only says that the camera might have been _Washburn’s_ first aerial camera.Quote:
Originally Posted by mdarnton
The first aerial camera was whatever Nadar used for the first aerial photographs, which were views of Paris c.1875. On wet plate no less!
However Mr. Washburn's many accomplishments (along with his great aerial photographs) are not to be discounted. Finding his abandoned gear is quite a feat.
The story of Washburn's camera left behind on that glacier is legendary among quite a few Indiana Jones types.Quote:
Originally Posted by Embdude
Like Sutter's cannon and Lewis & Clark's riverboat.
Fascinating objects of History that have been misplaced.
It's kinda like climbers finding Walter Bonatti's original descent piton near the summit of Gasherbrum IV. A legendary climber, a legendary peak in the Karakoram. And they took the trouble to look for it and prove that he really was there first. Or like me finding a whole set of points and skinning tools in a streambed from a mammoth kill, which had just washed out the last storm, and hadn't been seen by anyone for the last 13,000 years.
Cool stuff!
This https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/w...s-cameras.html story in the Times says the aerial camera is a Fairchild F-8. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Fairchild_F-8
Holy Grail? Rare and desirable? Really?
It's the history associated with it that's far more valuable than the object itself. Abraham Lincoln wore a tophat no different than innumerable other men during that time. But which one would the Smithsonian want? Likewise, a specific camera used by Bradford Washburn might be prized by some venue like the National Geographic Museum. He not only shot that kind of camera from the air, but often from the ground on tripod at distant subjects, and even bigger aerial cameras too. How many people do you know who do that? The results were often stunning, not only due to his excellent compositions, esthetically, but for their remarkable detail, exceptional in that era.
It is described as his first aerial camera, not the first !
He made & sold prints of his work through Panopticon gallery in Boston for a few years before he died. They were not unaffordable at that time, for prints around 11 x14" size. i am very glad that I made the decision to order a print of 'After the Storm' ( climbers on Doldenhorn) , which I'd seen in Bill Brandt's book 'The Land'. The print came and it was exquisite both in tone and detail. It's been framed and on my living room wall for the last 22 years. I wish I'd ordered one of Mt.McKinley later, I was thinking about it but missed my chance.
"Holy grail" is highly subjective. One could argue that Ansel Adams's or Edward Weston's view cameras are the "holy grail" of view cameras. Washburn is simply the best known (and arguably best) of the arctic aerial photographers. Previous ownership and history has a lot to do with the valuation of "things."