Amtrak's Dark Secret

Here's something you may not know, Amtrak's Northeast Corridor is, occasionally, illuminated. The occasion being overnight Maintenance of Way (MOW) activity. It can be a great opportunity for photography. However, the right of way is lighted for track work, not cameras, so you still have to treat it as a low-light situation. To make matters even more challenging, you'll probably need a telephoto or zoom lens and since the aperture of most zooms narrows at the long end, it can be difficult to get a well lighted picture. On the positive side, because it's a work zone, trains often pass by at reduced speeds. It's a challenge worth considering. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, you can get some very satisfying photos.

Budget Cuts Hobble Library of Congress

 

(NYTimes) ... Just as military contractors, air traffic controllers and federal workers are coping with the grim results of a partisan impasse over the federal deficit, the Library of Congress, whose services range from copyrighting written works — whether famous novels or poems scribbled on napkins — to the collection, preservation and digitalization of millions of books, photographs, maps and other materials, faces deep cuts that threaten its historic mission. Continued

Titian Peale

(Wikipedia) - Titian Ramsay Peale (November 2, 1799 – March 13, 1885) was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Peale was first exposed to the study of natural history while assisting his father on his many excursions in search of specimens for the Peale Museum. The family moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where he began collecting and drawing insects and butterflies. Like his older brothers, Peale helped his father in the preservation of the museum's specimens for display, which included contributions from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Continued 

 

William Fox Talbot

(Wikipedia) William Henry Fox Talbot was a British inventor and a pioneer of photography, born on February 11, 1800 and died on September 17, 1877. He was the inventor of calotype process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium. His work in the 1840s on photo-mechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. Talbot is also remembered as the holder of a patent which, some say, affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. Additionally, he made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, and York. Continued

Rare 1865 Baseball Card to Be Auctioned in Maine

 

BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) Six-figure bids are expected when a rare 148-year-old baseball card discovered at a rural Maine yard sale is auctioned.
Saco River Auction Co. in Biddeford is holding an auction Wednesday that includes a card depicting the Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club. Continued

Mathew Brady

 

(Wikipedia) Mathew B. Brady (1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and the documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism. Continued

Photos: Library of Congress

Lewis Hine

(Wikipedia) Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. Continued

Image: "Marie and Albert Kawalski. 615 S. Band [Bond?] St., Baltimore, Md. Albert is 10 and Marie 11 years old. They worked, with mother, last winter, shucking oysters for Varn & Beard Packing Co., Young Island, S.C. (near Charleston). Mrs. Kawalski did not have things represented to her correctly and she found that all the children that had fare paid were compelled to work for the company. Other smaller children worked some and went to school some. Maire and Albert have worked several summers in the berry, beans and tomato fields packing houses near Baltimore." (Lewis Hine/Library of Congress) 

The Dead of Antietam

(NYTimes) On Sept. 19, 1862, just two days after the Battle of Antietam, Alexander Gardner, an employee of the photographer Mathew Brady, began documenting the battle’s grim aftermath. One of Gardner’s photographs, titled “Dead Horse of Confederate Colonel; both killed at Battle of Antietam,” depicted a milky-white steed lying on the field in an eerily peaceful repose. Another showed a line of bloated Confederate bodies along the Hagerstown Pike. Titled “View in the Field, on the west side of Hagerstown road, after the Battle of Antietam,” it is one of the most reproduced photographs of Civil War dead.
In October, Brady displayed Gardner’s photographs in his New York City studio. “The Dead of Antietam” both horrified and fascinated people. It was the first time in history that the general public was able to see the true carnage of war. One reporter wrote, “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it.” Continued

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

(LoC) On July 16, 1936, photographer Walker Evans (1903-75) took a leave of absence from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to accept a summer assignment with Fortune magazine. Evans, who had begun working as a photographer in 1928, had developed a modest reputation by the time that he was hired in October 1935 by Roy Stryker, then leader of the FSA photographic section. Stryker agreed to grant him leave for the magazine assignment on the condition that his photographs remained government property.
Evans and the writer James Agee spent several weeks among sharecropper families in Hale County, Alabama. The article they produced documented in words and images the lives of poor Southern farmers afflicted by the Great Depression; their work, however, did not meet Fortune's expectations and was rejected for publication.
Evans' desire to produce photographs that were "pure record not propaganda" did not harmonize with Stryker's emphasis on the use of the image to promote social activism. Soon after the Alabama series was completed, Evans returned to New York. There Evans and Agee reworked their material and searched for another publisher. In 1941, the expanded version of their story was published in book form as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, now recognized as a masterpiece of the art of photojournalism. Continued 

Historic Photo Archive Re-Emerges

(NYTimes) Roy Stryker, founder of the Farm Security Administration’s photography project, was determined to compile a visual encyclopedia of the United States in the 1930s and ’40s and preserve it for future generations.
So, while photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee crisscrossed the country, Mr. Stryker was sending boxes of prints to Ramona Javitz, the director of the New York Public Library Picture Collection, to make sure there was a repository other than the National Archives. ... None of the prints Mr. Stryker had donated were cataloged until Stephen Pinson, a photography curator, came to the New York Public Library in 2005. He hired two catalogers and they discovered that some 1,000 photos in the New York collection were not among the negatives in the Library of Congress collection. Continued

Books for Congress

(LoC) Today, the Library of Congress celebrates its birthday. On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved the appropriation of $5,000 for the purchase of "such books as may be necessary for the use of congress."The books, the first purchased for the Library of Congress, were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three maps was stored in the U.S. Capitol, the Library's first home. Continued

Man in Civil War photo, long unidentified, finally gets his name back

(Washington Post) The old photograph shows a young Confederate soldier posing proudly in an elegant uniform, with a pistol in his belt and a saber in his hand.
It is a well-known 1860s ambrotype worth thousands of dollars, and experts had identified the rare style of his buckle, the make of his English revolver and the cavalry outfit in which he served. But scholars at the Library of Congress, which was given the photo last year, had no idea who he was. Like scores of Civil War portraits, his was listed as “unidentified.” Until this week. Continued

Local Photographer Who Captured 'John-John' Dies

(WBAL) Some people may not know Stan Stearns by name, but many know his most famous photo. Stearns died this week at the age of 76. ... Stearns was the photographer who captured John F. Kennedy Jr., then known as "John-John," saluting at his father's funeral procession. The image became one of the most famous images in American history. Continued

Maryland Historical Society wants to identify subjects of Civil Rights era photos

(Baltimore Sun) Images of nearly 6,000 Baltimoreans are the life's work of a photographer who documented racial segregation and early civil rights protests, and also captured candid moments of now-anonymous brides, classmates, football players and black residents of the city. But while Paul S. Henderson left what Maryland Historical Society curator Jennifer Ferretti calls an "unparalleled visual record of civil rights in Baltimore," he didn't leave behind captions.
The names of his subjects aren't known, as Henderson didn't keep written files — or they didn't survive. Ferretti says it is time, a half-century later, to put names to the unidentified faces in the photographic negatives taken by Henderson, a black Baltimore commercial and news photographer active from about 1929 to 1960. And she's enlisting the public's help. Continued

Eller Captures Re-enactments for Re-posterity

Local photographer Joshua Eller has been busy documenting the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. Will he be this go-round's John Coffer? Time'll tell.

History Research: It’s a New Ball Game as Free Websites Provide Digital Copies of Wills, Maps, Newspapers, and Photos

(WoCCP) In this rapidly expanding world of online information, lots of helpful data is often just a few keystrokes away. The amount is exploding exponentially as a number of for-profit digital publishers, such as Ancestry and GenealogyBank, have taken the lead in making vast amounts of material available instantly. Beyond these excellent data aggregators, there are some free, open source repositories which are helpful too. Since they’re not as well-known, we thought we’d mention a few here in case you’re struggling with fee-based research overload. Continued

Photo: Photograph documenting WPA Project Number 272. Typed text on label on back of photograph reads: Works Progress Administration of Maryland, Division of Operations. Havre de Grace, Harford County. Resurfacing city streets - showing section of Washington St. completed, curb, gutter, and surfacing. (Pratt Library)

'Dickensian Baltimore' recalls era of commerce, and poverty

(Towson Times) Long before Towson resident John McGrain became the historian for Baltimore County, he began taking photographs of Baltimore City.
He took his first photo 65 years ago, said McGrain, who was the unofficial county historian for years before he became the official historian in 1998. He retired from that post in 2006.
It has been said of McGrain that he not only knows where the bodies are buried in the county, he knows what they were wearing. Continued

Maryland Historical Society acquires rare photos

(stardem.com) Recently the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) acquired at auction an extremely rare daguerreotype of a Baltimore slave Martha Ann "Patty" Atavis (c.1819-1874) and a tintype of the same woman holding Alice Lee Whitridge, the daughter of Dr. John Whitridge of Baltimore. The items are from circa 1845-1860.
These photographs and the supporting documents acquired help illuminate the realities of urban slavery in Baltimore during the Civil War era. They will be on display in the MdHS library beginning Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Continued

Shutterbugs Episode 1 - In an Instant

MDRails calls it quits, almost

I took down MDRails, our railroad photography website today. It had a good run, but we've been cutting down on expenses and it just had to go. I will be reconstituting the site on blogger under the same name. You can find the new MDRails at http://mdrails.blogspot.com/. I will also be adding some railfan location information and camera stuff to the posts.