Found Treasure, A Portrait of my Grandfather as a Boy

[Michael E]

I have to assume that getting an embossed sleeve was just part of the portrait back in the days. Today that mount/sleeve embossed with beveled corners would cost more than a few dollars.

Back in the days a visit to the local portrait studio was not cheap. A sleeve like that might cost a few dollars today, but we earn a lot more (in absolute numbers) than they did back than.

I guess my point is what was standard back in the day was much better, people took pride in their work and craftsmen, artisans, of most all trades and produced superior products. This kind of quality doesn't seem to be available today with the same attention to detail. If one does find it, they pay through the nose to get it.

People still take pride in what they do. Tools change, always have. Photographers in 1930 would have killed for a tool like photoshop. People in another 80 years will find early digital photography incredibly charming.

I would venture to guess those studios would charge a premium to create an image that would represent what I took a video of.

Because it is not standard procedure anymore. It is not hard (for someone who knows what they are doing) to produce this kind of print quality. Back then they had fixed setups and large numbers, now it's special order.

If you are interested in producing similar photos: Much of the magic of this image is due to good lighting. Also, the contrast range of the lighting in this image is a perfect match for the tonal range of the film. It was probably taken with a large camera and contact printed - it was simpler and cheaper than getting a small negative enlarged. Contact prints have advantages when it comes to smooth tonal transitions and the rendering of fine details. The paper was probably a warm tone paper, or was toned, or faded to brown. This refers to the silver image. The paper probably had also a creme-colored base (at least here in Germany it was called "chamois"). Todays papers usually have a bright white base. You can "tone" it by bathing it in coffee, tea, herbal tea, etc. (FB paper only, this does not work with RC paper).

If you work along these marks (good light, contact printing, warm tone(d) paper with warm tone(d) base), you should be able to achieve a similar quality. Well, that plus years of study and practice. It's not the material alone...

Michael

[tgtaylor]

I watched the video but I don't have the sound hooked-up on this box. However, it appears that the studio's name is shown below the photo: Voorhers & Brudsa... . With that information you could search the Dallas City directories and newspapers of the time for information on their services. Surely they advertised. You can also consult this online source http://www.langdonroad.com/ and the book Catching Shadows: A Directory of Nineteenth-Century Texas Photographers by David Haynes which is available at amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Shado...p/0876111304#_

A little time spent digging should turn-up a wealth of information about their methods and services.

Best of luck with it,

Thomas

[Daniel Stone]

vorhees & burdsall studios, I just searched it on google:

seems they were a studio of some sort, I can't seem to find any more info that what is referenced below

http://books.google.com/books?id=Dvf...dallas&f=false

-Dan

[Sevo]

Not suggesting that the OP do so, but what would happen to a print that shows this kind of patina or shine from silver oxidation if you run it through a fresh fixer? Would this remove the patina or slow down the process in the future.

Re-fixing will do all kinds of nasty things to the toned image, and will not remove dichroic silvering. There are some funky tricks with hydrochloric fumes which are sometimes used in severe cases when important documentary photographs glaze over to invisibility, but you would not do that on such a overall nice picture.

Careful washing might help to get the hypo residues out, but it is risky, and in such a mild case, the damage done by having to remove the original mounting board is much worse than any improvement you can expect from wet reprocessing, so I'd urgently recommend to leave it alone. Further decay can be slowed by placing a sheet of alkaline buffered archival tissue over the image before folding the cover sleeve, and storing the image perfectly dry and protected against environmental gasses.

[akfreak]

vorhees & burdsall burned down lost everything