Old Photography

Old Photography

Panoramic Photography

Photographers, excited by their ability to capture images, soon wanted to take pictures of large scenes such as landscapes and city skylines. Before the introduction of panoramic cameras, wide angle lenses and zooms, these wide photographs were created by a sequence of overlapping slides. The panoramic photograph was thus created by the sequence of sheets.

Cased photographs

Daguerreotype is the first process which produced « one-of-a-kind » images. The image was exposed on a silvered copper plate, which gives it the mirror-like effect (1839 – circa 1860).

Ambrotype (or collodion positive) is also a “one-of-a-kind” image. The image is a glass negative created using the collodion wet-plate process, and is backed with black varnish or paint to create a positive image (1852 – circa 1880).

An old wall enhanced. Photo by Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Tintype is created using the collodion wet-plate process like the ambrotype. However, like the daguerreotype, it is created on a metal plate, in this case, one made of “black japanned iron” (circa 1856 – circa 1940).

Cases were usually made of wood and embossed with different designs. Inside the photographs were placed, usually on the right hand side, and on the left was a “cloth-covered pad”.

Colour Tinted Abrotype

Paper prints

Cartes de visite were widely produced starting in 1861. Using the collodion wet glass negative, a positive image was created on albumen printing paper. The paper was then mounted on a card, usually around 2 ½ x 4 inches.

Cabinet photographs were a larger version of the carte de visite and were also mounted on cards, measuring approximately 4 x 5 ½ inches. They had information about the photographer or studio intricately printed on the back. These gained popularity in 1866.

Early 3D Imagery

Stereographs are two photographs taken of the same image at a slightly different angle.

Stereoscope – when you place a stereograph in a stereoscope and look through the viewfinder, you will see a 3-dimensional image. When you look through this particular stereoscope you will see a Spirit Stereograph. Are they really ghosts in the image or is it simply a double exposure meant to trick the viewer. Spirit photography was common in the early years of photography.

Sea canon digitally enhanced. Photo: © by Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Photo Album

Photo Album was introduced in the later 19th century. In Canada photo albums were produced by a Canadian female photographer, Madame Brunner. Photo Albums in most cases, would have contained photographs like the popular carte de visite (although some contained a few tintypes.

Set of Apertures which control the amount of light that comes into a camera. Tripod. Thornton Pickard Imperial Triple Extension Camera, circa 1890s. Plates of various sizes, including a book-type plate; Crayon Photoprints were photographs that were drawn over with crayon. Artists` Set used by artists that were often hired by photographers to touch-up or paint their photographs.

Composite photographs

Composite photographs were made by combining images from many individual portraits onto a painted or photographed background.

Early photography required long exposure times and people had to pose for quite long periods of time. It was difficult to have people stay still long enough to create a group portrait. Composite photography meant that photographers could overcome the technological limitations of the day.

The photographer would arrange for each person to pose for their picture in the studio at separate times. Then all the images were put together, “cut a paste”, just as we do today. Sometimes is hard to find where the photographer pasted individual people into a composite picture. Sometimes, the original portraits were displayed around the border on the puzzle panel.

Etiquette Confusion

Etiquette Confusion

Taking off the White Gloves

Savoir-faire today means faring with newfangled families and devices.

It used to be that rules of etiquette were fairly cut and dry, and most folks followed them strictly. Married women took their husbands’ last name. Second marriages were rare – third marriages almost unheard of. Couples wouldn’t dream of living together before they were married. There were no cellular phones, internet, fax machines, beepers…

But women’s liberation, new technology, and the inevitable passing of time have revamped our lifestyles and created a new age of etiquette confusion. Now issues from hyphenated to call waiting test our good manners almost daily. For those who are just trying to keep up here’s a primer.

Women’s Names

Never married women: Miss is traditional title for an unmarried woman of any age, but today it is best used when addressing girls younger than 18. It is still used in addressing adult single woman on formal invitations, but it is no longer necessary even there, notes etiquette expert Leticia Baldrige in her book The New Manners for the 90’s. A more sophisticated (and professional) title for unmarried woman “Ms”.

Etiquette. Photo by Elena

Married women: Traditionally, a married woman’s name consists of her first name, maiden name, and husband’s last name. Some women prefer to keep their middle name and drop their maiden name. In either case, this women should be formally addressed by using Mrs. With her husband’s first name.

Correspondence to the couple should be addressed as either “Mr. and Mrs.” or “Mr. and Ms.” Followed by their first and last names. A married woman should not be addressed as Mrs. with her own first name. That combination is reserved for divorced women.

Less traditional – but increasingly popular – is a practice of a married woman keeping her maiden name.

Some married women prefer to use their maiden name at work and their husband’s last name at home. In that case the woman should be addressed as “Ms.” at work or Mrs. in social situations. Although potentially confusing, this set-up offers the best of each situation; a woman can keep her identity at work while sharing a last name with her husband and children in other settings. Business letters or invitations for the couple should follow the “work” rule, while social correspondence should be addressed traditionally.

If a woman choses to hyphenate her maiden name with her husband’s last name, her name should be first. When addressing correspondence to the couple, both names should be used.

Divorced women: A woman who divorces often returns to using her maiden name. But when she has children, it can be confusing for her to use a last name different from theirs. When your family members use different surnames, for whatever reason, make sure that those who need to know are informed. A child’s school should be told, as would your own office staff, for informational purposes only, advises etiquette expert Elisabeth L. Post in her book, Emily Post’s etiquette.

If a divorced woman has children and wants to keep their last name, she should use her first name – not her husband’s. This way she is easily identified as both a divorced woman and as the children’s parent.

Widows: Until she remarries, a woman keeps her husband’s name, and she is addressed the same way as a married woman. If she marries again, she can use her former husband’s last name or her maiden name as a middle name.

Weapons Against Sneezes

Weapons Against Sneezes

Good news for those who sniffle through the pollen season

Spring is when young hearts turn to love, goes the adage, but for as many as 1 in 10 Americans, spring marks the start of the dreaded hay fever season. The airborne pollens that wreak all the havoc are less than the width of an average human hair, yet allergy patients spend some $800 million annually on doctors’ fees, allergy shots, and prescription medicines to battle them.

No area is completely pollen-free, though dry areas and those at high altitudes or near a large body of water may provide some relief. Consult an allergist if you are considering a permanent change in residence, however. A doctor may instead be able to prescribe a series of injections that can greatly reduce your sensitivity to pollens without requiring a move to the desert.

Several new drugs may also help bring relief. Such relief is typically found in two ways – antihistamines, which prevent the symptoms from occurring, and decongestants, which work after the symptoms have begun. The negative side effect, particularly with antihistamines, has been drowsiness.

Here’s what the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology says about some of the newer drug and treatment options:

Cromolyn Sodium (Intal): This asthma medication has recently become available as a nasal spray (Nasalcrom) or an eye drop (Opticrom, Vistacrom) and could help nearly a third of the nation’s hay fever victims. It is used to prevent the severe symptoms of allergies and often reduces or eliminates the use of antihistamines, decongestants, or steroids.

Terfenadine: Usually found under the brand name Seldane or Seldane caplets, this antihistamine is equal in effectiveness to many other antihistamines but is unique in that it does not cause drowsiness. The medication is deigned to stop the hay fever symptoms from occurring by preventing the release of histamine in the body. Histamine is what makes your eyes tear and itch and your nose run and causes swelling of nasal passages and sneezing.

Astemizole: Usually found under the brand name Hismanal, astemizole is a nonsedating prescription antihistamine. Its only-daily dosing schedule is enough to help relieve allergic rhinitis, or hay fever symptoms.

Beclomethasone and Flunisolide: Neither are new, but both of these cortisone-based drugs are being more widely prescribed now because of their success in fighting inflammation better than many otheer medications. Beclomethasone can be found under the brand names Vancenase, Beclovent and Vanceril; flunisolide under the names Nasalide and AeroBid.

Weapon against sneezes. Photo by Elena

Meeting Asthma Head-On

That wheezing or persistent cough may be a sign that you’re asthmatic

It may be that there are more dust, pollen, mold and chemical pollutants in the air to irritate us. Or perhaps we’re evolving into a more allergic species. Whatever the reasons may be, the American Lung Association reports a dramatic 36 percent rise since the end of the 20th century in the number of Americans with asthma. As many as 15 million Americans currently suffer from this lung condition, which blocks airflow and makes breathing difficult. Over 5,000 die of the condition in the United States each year.

One of the biggest problems, according to a panel of medical experts convened by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, is that many doctors lack the training necessary to properly diagnose and control the condition in patients at an early stage. Even when the diagnosis is made, the panel found, doctors often err by only treating symptoms and not the underlying causes of an asthma attack.

Attacking a problem early is the key to limiting its impact, the asthma specialists agree. Severe asthma attacks can be sharply reduced by limiting environmental irritants and using anti-inflammatory drugs to control the airway inflammation that leads to attacks rather than relying on medication that can only help relax ariways once attacks have started.

Asthma experts also strongly recommend that asthma sufferers regularly test their lung capacity at home with a device known as a peak flow meter. Such monitoring can help detect early signs of asthma attacks before more obvious symptoms such as tightness in the chest, wheezing, and persistent coughing appear.

Something to sneeze at

Phoenix is no longer the allergy haven it’s reputed to be

The arid desert air of Phoenix, Arizona, has long beckoned allergy sufferers and other victims of fecund humidity, a call often echoed by well-meaning but misinformed allergists. The truth is, however, that Phoenix is no haven for the bleary-eyed masses.

In fact, with a 10-month growing season made possible by irrigation and ever-increasing pollution triggered by rapid population growth, Phoenix has become a hotbed of sneezing and sniffling. In most metropolitan areas, allergy sufferers make up no more than 15 percent of the population, but in Phoenix, that number may run as high as 25 percent.

Ironically, Phoenix’s reputation for soothing air may be one of the leading causes of this anomaly. Some doctors suggest that the influx of hopeful allergy sufferers has created a pool of allergy-prone genes that are passed down from generation to generation. The odds back this up; if both parents suffer from an allergy, that child has a 50 to 75 percent chance of inheriting it.

As it turns out, a new location probably wouldn’t have helped the afflicted breathers anyway. Though a change of environment may bring temporary relief, repetead exposure to new materials will eventually bring on the same old symptoms.

Fact File

Steeling yourself for the sneeze season

Depending on where you are, the pollen season runs from February or March until October. The farther north you live, the later the season’s start. Trees pollinate first, the grasses and weeds.

For ragweed sufferers, the most hospitable areas include:

• Florida’s extreme souther tip.
• Regions west of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington.
• The central Adirondacks.
• The wooded areas of Maine, New Hampshire, northern Minnesota, extreme northern Michigan, and California.
• The desert regions and forests of the Rocky Mountain.
•  Hawaï’i, Alaska, and the Caribbean.

Asthma Troublemakers to Keep in Check

Among the most common triggers of asthma attacks, according to the American Lung Association, are allergies to foods and other household products. Here are some of the most likely culprits.

•     Air pollution: Weather inversions, Traffic jams, Parking jams, Smoke-filled rooms.
•     Allergies: Foods such as nuts, chocolate, eggs, orange juice, fish, milk, or peanut butter.
•     Pollens from flowers, trees, grasses, hay, or ragweed. Mold spores.
•     Animals such as rabbits, cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, chickens or birds.
•     Feather pillows, down comforters.
•     Insect parts, as from dead cockroaches.
•     Sensivity to sulfites, a food preservative, or to aspirin.
•     Dusts: Cloth-unpholstered furniture, carpets, or draperies that gather dust. Brooms and dusters that raise dust. Dirty filters on hot air furnaces and air conditioners that put dust into the air.
•     Emotional stresses: Fear. Anger. Frustration. Laughing too hard, crying coughing.
•     Exercise: Wheezing from overexertion, especially in cold weather.
•     Household products: Vapors from cleaning solvents, paint, paint thinner, liquid chlorine, bleach. Sprays from furniture polish, starch, cleaners, room deodorizers.
•     Spray deodorants, perfumes, hair sprays, talcum powder, scented cosmetics.
•     Infections: Colds, other viruses. Bronchitis. Tonsillitis. Sore throat.
•     Irritants at work: Dusts, vapors. Fumes from wood products (western red cedar, some pine and birch woods, and mahogany). Flour, cereals, grains, coffee, tea papain. Metals (platinum, chromium, nickel sulfate, soldering fumes). Cotton, flax, hemp. Mold from decaying hay.
•     Nighttime: Lying down, fatigue, accumulating mucus.
•     Smoke: From cigarettes, cigars, pipes – either yours or someone else’s.
•     Weather: Exercise in cold air. Changes in seasons.

Note that the incidence of asthma has doubled among the young in the last decade.

Discount Brokers

Discount Brokers

Schwab or Fidelity – that is the question when you’re looking for a discount broker

Discount brokerage firms Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments have battled for years to lure investors to their no-fee mutual funds. The winners are the investors, who stand to save on fees and tap into a bounty of services. Both fund programs, Schwabs’s Onesource and Fidelity’s FundsNetWork, have several conveniences in common, such as 24-hour, toll-free phone service. And both allow investors to manage a portfolio of funds from different families, get one statement, and switch among funds and cash-management accounts. In both programs, to switch funds, you simply fill out a transfer form and brokerages consolidate the funds you own.

Which one’s the better deal? Fidelity has the edge when it comes to sheer numbers of funds. OneSource offers 254 funds at no transaction fee, although nearly 500 more funds are available for a sales charge. Fidelity’s FundsNetwork is huge with 327 no-fee funds, plus 1,600 funds for fees. Another plus for Fidelity: The Company won’t allow Schwab to offer Fidelity funds for no transaction fee, so OneSource doesn’t include Fidelity funds in its lineup of no-fee funds. However, FundsNetwork offers 86 of Fidelity’s 202 funds without a transaction fee. To buy one of its low-loads, you still pay a 3 percent or so sales charge.

Beware of too much hopping around from one fund to another in both programs. Schwab allows an unlimited number of free switches among funds held for more than three months within a calendar year. But, switches made before three months are subject to a $39 fee. Fidelity’s policy is more onerous, though the company says it is reviewing it. Investors get five free redemptions in a 12-month period for a fund held in their account fewer than six months. Then fees kick in, which are determined by the amount of the transaction and can run about $50 for a $5,000 investment.

If it’s face-to-face contact you’re looking for, Schwab is the clear winner: Schwab has 202 branches, compared to Fidelity’s 77.

Discount Brokers, Mano a Mano

New-York, Manhattan. Photo: Elena

Best of the Closed-Up Funds

Country-fund fever started spreading in late 1989, with lots of investors paying premium prices for the funds. Here are the 10 performing closed-end stock funds for 1994. Most are selling at sizable discounts, a reflection of low investor demand. Closed-end funds had a tough 1994, with only 5% ending the year on a positive note: Brazil Fund, Brazilian Equity, Chile Fund, Japan Equity, Korea Fund, ROC Taiwan, Taiwan Fund, Korean Invest, India Growth, Gemini II Fund.

Tracking International Funds: The best and worst of the conventional international stock mutual funds over the five years ending in December 1994 and their five-year annualized return.

Ten best: GAM International, Merrill Lynch Dev CapMarkets A, Smith Barney International Equity A, Harbor International, Warburg Pincus International, Euro Pacific Growth, Morgan Stanley Instl International Equity, Templeton Foreign, Managers International Equity, Ivy International A.

Ten worst: Ivy Canada A, Quantitative International Equity, Dreyfus/Laurel International Investments, Invesco International Growth, Flag Investment International, WPG International, Alliance International A, Keystone International, Rodney Square International Equity, G.T. Global International Growth A.

Home-Grown Funds with the most foreign interests: The five domestic funds that had the highest percentageof overseas holdings at the end of 1994: Aetna Growth Sel, Excel Value, Fidelity Capital Appreciation, Capital Income Builder, Prudential MultiSector A.

Foreign Investments

Foreign Investments

Navigating Foreign Waters: Can you do better overseas? It depends on the economic weather.

Some $500 billion crosses the ocean every year in search of better mutual fund returns. The rewards from overseas mutual funds can be sizable but the risks are also huge. Wild swings from year to year are not unheard of. International fund stocks usually gain more in average compared with domestic stock funds. Sometimes international stock funds fall more than compared with a decline for general equity funds. A look at the graphs comparing general U.S. equity funds and world equity funds show that U.S. and world markets seem to be moving in tandem.

Still want to swim in foreign waters? Your options include investing in domestic funds with big overseas stock holdings, or is one of two types of international mutual funds: conventional open-end mutual funds, and closed-end, single-country or single-region funds. You can also buy shares directly in a foreign company.

A closed-end fund is not as esoteric as it sounds. It’s like an investment company, of which a certain number of shares are sold to the public. Its shares trade on major stock markets like those of any other company. The reason for such funds is simple: They allow countries or regions to open up markets to U.S. investors without the risk of floods of new capital washing in and out and destabilizing their markets.

A coffee shop in Jamaica. Photo: Elena

Most financial advisors agree that individuals who invest overseas should be willing to make a commitment of at least three years, and preferably five. Foreign markets, funds and stocks are generally more volatile than those in the United States. Investors who pull out at the first sign of trouble are most likely to get walloped. Experts generally suggest that you allocate 10 to 30 percent of your portfolio overseas –some counsel as much as half. Despite the risks, a lot of big investors have been looking abroad, and small investors are following in their wake.

One possible solution for small investors edgy about foreign adventures but tempted by potential high returns is to sink some money into the handful of international mutual funds that go practically anywhere on the planet. These funds put most of their money into well-developed foreign markets, which tend to be safer and less volatile, but funnel 20 percent or more into wilder markets.