Vintage Photography

I am a newb here. My interest in photography was born of my interest in vintage photography. I like hardware store photos, barber shop photos, and old town views. Does anyone else here appreciate old photos?

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Yes!
I love vintage things with a passion

Yeah.. I love them.

I think the forum should have a section dedicated to the display and restoration of old prints, they're precious commodities...

Oh yes , I love browsing for old photos and trying to make some of mine look old. One of my favourite is a 1905 shot of geronimo on wikipedia.

I have lots of them - old family ones mostly. I have posted a few in the past.

Love them! I spent some time this winter scanning and cataloging a large batch of old photos that we found in an old trunk after my Grandmother died. Its a terrific way to preserve our history.

I have a few Native American photos. I once had a chance to buy an original print of that Geronimo shot. The back of the photo was marked Department of Indian Affairs and it had been used as an identification photo sent to law enforcement and the military. On the back was a stamp similar to the one used in library books with the check out and return dates. I passed because I didn't have the money. Since it has changed hands several times most recently for close to 10 times the figure I passed on.

The fellow in the first pic is J. Bowman of Flora, Illinois. He published numerous 'real photo' postcards which were very artistically done by a local photographer only identified on some of his cards as TW.

Another favorite art photographer is George Fiske, famous Yosemite photographer and mentor to Ansel Adams.

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Other than shooting digital, I enjoy daguerreotypy and tintyping. I built a view camera this summer, and will be making daguerreotypes starting in a couple of weeks. I hope to be making tintypes by next summer. I have used both processes with other photographers' equipment, but my plan is to get my own set together by then.

Some of my daguerreotypes :

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Those are awesome Cody. I like the top Dag a lot. Is there a less toxic method of making a Dag now days? The heavy metals were very hazardous and shortened the photographers life span.

As for vintage dags and Ambros, I can't afford to collect them. The market has gone mad on all early photography over the last 15 or so years. I buy cabinet cards, CDVs, real photo postcards and some tintypes. They are still affordable and have had good increases in value for quality images and notable photographers.

I love old photos and have a number of them from the late 19th and early 20th century. I was blessed to have a father who realized how important they were to me and who passed them along before he died.

kkhardwarestore - I used the Becquerel process for making dags. It takes ten times as long for exposures, but only uses Iodine. This is the (oversimplified) basic process - don't use it to try to do this, find instructions somewhere :

Start with a (silver) plate. Polish with electric buffer for ~20 minutes, starting with a buffer with rouge, buffing in each direction (horizontally, then flip 180 degrees, then flip 90 degrees). Second wheel buff without rouge. After this stage of polishing, hand-polish on a piece of velvet for 2+ minutes (this is really up to you how long to polish. This will make polishing marks finer). Then go in a darkroom and sensitize by putting in a box with iodine crystals. You can gauge sensitivity by color changes in the face of the plate. After sensitizing, place in a plate holder. You should have about two hours to take your image before the plate starts to tarnish.

With the becquerel process in broad daylight, I typically had exposures around 3 min, 15 seconds at f2.8. After exposing your image, go back in the darkroom and place the plate behind rubylith, being careful to keep the plate from rubbing against the filter. Place in direct sunlight or halogen lamp light for approximately two hours with a fan blowing on it (heat = bad, humidity = bad). Place in extremely weak fixer for approximately 30 seconds, then rinse several times in distilled water. If you want to gild it, put it on a stand (don't let it dry out!), then place gilding solution (gold cloride) on top of plate. Heat from beneath with propane torch with heat spreader until "stains" disappear (read instructions for more details). Quench in distilled water, then place back in pan of distilled water. After drying, place behind glass immediately to prevent dust contamination.

Beginning to end, this process usually took me about 5 hours per plate.

We have some old tintypes dating back to the 1870s. My mum has some old b/w photos of DUKWs practicing for D-Day.

I think I like collecting photography because of the subjective nature of values. There are some universally accepted variables which drive commercial values up but there are many, more emotional, reasons effecting values to an individual.

For instance this real photo postcard worth maybe $1 on the market is priceless to me because it is my dad, RIP.

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I too love restoring some old family photos.. I too would be motivated by an old photo and restoration forum..

Becquerel dags age pretty much just like normal daguerreotypes. Just seal them well (when putting them behind glass to keep out dust and prevent oxidation), and out of direct sunlight, and you have something that will outlast any of us