Christie recap

Oh, the random stuff you can find at an antique fair! I had a great time at Christie, and only managed to get a minor sun burn on my shoulders for a full day in the sun. Both my mom and I got some stuff, she was mostly looking for some supplies for a few crafts she's had in mind for a while now. Fortunately, both of us got small stuff, so the drive back to Toronto was nice and easy. Here are some of my spoils!

 It's a paper photograph,

 mounted in a brass matte,

 mounted onto a carte de visite. AKA, the chief reason I bought it. I have never seen this before. I could understand and almost expect a tintype in there, but the paper is different.

 And speaking of tintypes, check out this super bent number! My mom thought it looked like someone had run over it with a tool or something since the bends look really uniform and part of a pattern. I was just impressed that the emulsion held up so well to being attacked like that.

Cheese box! Bit hard to resist, and so utilitarian. Practical antiques!

I'm Back!!!

I am back from Paris! The jet lag is over with, most of the pictures are on my computer and the suitcase has been more or less unpacked. My friends and family tell me that they did get their postcards, so most of them arrived before I actually came home! Also, one of the girls on the trip sent me one, so I had a lovely, vintage reminder about my trip waiting for me a few days after I got back.

Now all I have to do is go through the 2000+ photos and notes to write my journal for my final project!
*sigh

It's a lot of porn/art to sift through, but somebody has to do it. Here's a small selection for the great wide web.

This is a wonderful place called the Albert Khan Museum and Gardens. He was a pretty cool (and rich) guy that wanted a record of the world. As a result, he commissioned a little over 72,000 autochromes to be taken of people, places and things. Autochromes are some of the first colour photographs, and are unbelievably stunning to see in the flesh. They are also fairly hard to get a hold of in North America, so seeing as many as we did here, and at other collections is pretty insane.
The gardens at the museum are really beautiful, they're filled with ponds and little waterfalls that block out the noise and smell of downtown Paris.

These autochromes are from the Société Française de Photographie's collection. Note the early, colour "art" (ie porn) on the left. They've held up beautifully, especially being about 100 years old.

We lucked out while we were there, since not only was it International Museum Day, Paris was having a "Night at the Museum" evening, where admission was free to several museums and galleries! Most were also open later than usual, closer to midnight. The Paris Museum of Natural History was the one my buddy and I went to. They like their bugs and lack of decent lighting on their exhibit cases. Despite that, it was really cool!

This is the minor issue with glass plates, occasionally they don't make it from one place to the other very well.

Don't think we didn't go flea marketing! This is one of the many, many flea markets in the larger area of Saint-Ouen. We got some amazing photographs, including autochromes, and spent well too much money. So far as souvenirs go, they're pretty awesome. I have some great cabinet cards of the Arc de Triomphe and the Saint-Michel fountain.

We spent many an evening and afternoon picnicking on the Pont des Arts. Nice view eh? We had a picnic dinner on the lawn outside the Eiffel Tower one evening. As the evening goes along, the tower starts lighting up, and than at 10pm, the sparkly, twinkling lights turn on. A very nice backdrop for some cheap wine, smoked salmon and a lot of cheese and baguettes.

I have a lot of photos to go through, and I have every intention of posting some of the food pictures  I have of the picnics and escargots.

Runny Eggs

As I sit here at my computer, writing this blog to put off doing more research about 20th century cameras used by professional photographers, I look at my lunch and realize that I really need to work on how to cook eggs.

I love diner style breakfasts with runny, sunny-side up eggs, loads of hash browns and ham slices. I try to redeem the lack of nutrients and vitamins by having Oj or extra fruit with it. Either way, I love cheap, greasy diner breakfasts.

Sadly, I have a hard time cooking them myself. I guess not having the flat, griddle surface that diners have might be my first problem, but I suck at cooking eggs in general. I can hard boil them, and that's about it. My scrambled eggs are a little weird and I can't do sunny-side up eggs without them exposing at one point or another. None the less, I will still try, I hope it's down to practice and a decent frying pan. Today's attempt was going fairly well until the last flip where the yolk started to rip, and moving it to the plate was the breaking point, as can be seem. Tasted really good though, and I was really happy with my potatoes and onions.

In other news, CONSERVATION ROAD TRIP!! Eight of us from my Master's program are going to the 10th Biannual Winter Meeting of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works next weekend! Not only have we lucked out that the conference is focusing on photography this year, it's happening in Ottawa and not in the States like previous years. We've all scrapped together our pennies for the conference fees, hotel and the rental cars, and we're hitting the road on Thursday night for the drive to Ottawa.

Professionals from all over North America are giving lectures and workshops about preservation issues in photography, and it's being hosted by the National Gallery of Canada, Library and Archives Canada and the Canadian Conservation Institute.

I am ready to thoroughly geek out for two days.

Also, thank you to our Chemistry professor, Chris for not being understanding about us missing class on Thursday to go to the conference, but for actually encouraging us to go since it's a great opportunity. Thank you Chris, you're amazing.

D.I.Y. Photography HARDCORE!

Over the last month or so, I have been working on a big project from my 19th century photographic processes and materials class. We were instructed to experiment and recreate a 19th century photographic process, and keep it as close as possible to the traditional process. We had some of our presentations today, and we've got a wide range of photographs, everything from ambrotypes, tintypes, calotypes and albumen prints. I am so glad my presentation is done and I can hand in my lab book tomorrow. So tired.... and woozy from a variety of funky chemicals.

I decided to make tintypes! Myself and my group members made a whack load
of unique, one--of-a-kind photographs on metal plates. I made the main decision to do photographs on metal plates since I figured that using glass plates (like in Daguerreotypes and Ambrotypes) and being a klutz probably wouldn't go well together. Turns out that that was a good decision, since in one day our glass varnish bottle exploded and the glass mortar and pestle fell apart in my hands. We weren't having the best luck that day.
This is a real, 19th century tintype, eg, what it's supposed to look like! Note the hand tinted rosy cheeks to make "Grandma Carmen" look less dead!

This project had us using the 19th century process as much as possible, and in our case we made our own emulsion and developer from scratch. We used a few ready-made chemicals and materials, mostly the pre-cut metal plates and commercial rapid fix. There was a fair amount of trial and error involved in this project, we have a lot of messed up plates.

Mmmmm... Developer.

I started with a colour photo I happened to have had lying around at the time, I think my final results turned out fairly well.

Yep, the tintype is reversed. Generally speaking, there was a bit of a loss in detail, the lighting effects on the wall are completely gone. Still looks awesome though, I'm quite quite happy with it.

The best part about this whole thing, it means I've only got one last assignment before I'm done for the semester! Thankfully we got an extension on this essay, since it was supposed to be due on the same day as this presentation. I probably wouldn't be alive at this point had I had to do both for today. My consumption of real food has gone down in the last few weeks with crunch time. Still eating well, but the time to cook fun or new stuff hasn't existed in a while. Starting this upcoming weekend though, back to real food and crafts! My roommate and I plan to have a Christmas dinner party before she heads back to the island for the holidays. Updates will come soon with the menu plan!