She uploaded it to weather.com yesterday and we just received reports from friends that they saw it on the Weather Channel.  We’re thrilled.

Can you spot the falling tree?

Let us know what you think of it.

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This photoblog uses the DuoTone theme for Wordpress that is the evolution of the popular Monotone theme.  The background color dynamically changes for each post to present the best accent for the photo.  I’m pretty happy with this one, so far it’s been easy to customize and SEO friendly.

Stop by and let me know what you think.

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Event: Photowalk at the National Archives and the Chinese New Year Parade, Sunday Feburary 21, 2010 12:00 – 5:00

Part One – National Archives (Noon to ~1:30)

February 24th marks the last day that photography will be allowed in the National Archives. This photowalk is a chance for us to take advantage of the time left.  We’ll group up at noon on the steps of the National Archives (700 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest) and spend the next hour or so inside.  The Archives are easily accessible by Metro using the Archives – Navy Memorial – Penn Quarter stop on the Green Line.

Please come with a good attitude, some reverence for the documents we’ll be seeing, and a fast lens. I usually like to visit the locations of our photowalks beforehand but the weather lately has not allowed me to so my intel and times may be off some.  From the images I’ve seen inside the Archives there are places with very low light.  While photography is allowed until the 24th, flash is never allowed inside so please be sure to disable yours. I’d recommend a fast lens if you have it.  I will have an extra Canon EF 50mm 1.8 II I can loan to someone.

While public photography, or the lack thereof,  is a hot button issue for some please leave your opinions at the door on this one (we can all blog our opinions about it later).  There are good arguments on both sides concerning the National Archives decision.  I’d rather we spend our effort on this walk having a good time, getting some great photographs and dodge any drama.  Please remember the staff we’ll encounter at the Archives were probably not involved in the decision and are just following their instructions.

Part Two – The Hike (1:30 – 2:00)

After our visit to the Archives we’ll head North to Chinatown.  There are two options and we can make our decision during the walk based on weather conditions.  First we can walk, its a short 5 block route up 7th Street.  Metro is the second option taking the Archives – Navy Memorial – Penn Quarter station one stop up the Green Line to Gallery Place – Chinatown stop.

Part Three – Chinese New Years Parade, The Year of the Tiger (2:00 – 5:00)

The Chinese New Year festival is hosted by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association which is comprised of 30 Chinese-American organizations throughout the Greater Washington, DC area. This celebration is a symbolic of spring and it is tradition to wear red to ward off evil spirits.

The festival takes place in the heart of DC’s Chinatown and it includes an exciting parade, the Chinese Lion and Dragon Dances, as well as a five-story high firecracker that will be ignited at 3:45 p.m. According to the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce’s website, more than 4,000 red packets with key chain or lucky money will be given away during the parade.

The parade runs down H Street between 6th and 8th Street.

Part Four – The Wrap-up (5:00 – ?)

Those of us that want to stick around and share a drink or dinner we’ll find someplace nearby.  Expect good conversation and plenty of chimping.  There are plenty of restaurants in the area to choose from.

RSVP

Photowalk DC is open to all level of photographers, from point and shooters to professionals.  We enjoy a great group of regulars at each event and welcome all new comers.  Please consider joining our group on Facebook.

To register for this event you can leave a comment here or respond via our event page on Facebook.

Route Map

View Photowalk DC Feb 2010 Event in a larger map

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In 1839 no one had heard of Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Kodak and the other manufacturers that we are familiar with today.  Then, for a very short time, the only source of professional photography was from Alphonse Giroux and his brother-in-law, Jacques Daguerre.  From this pair came the world’s first commercially produced camera, the Daguerréotype Giroux.  It is credited with “the initial spark that began the worldwide spread of photography”.

There are only a few of these cameras known to be in existence and all are stored in public museums…except one recent find.  For the first time one of these cameras will be presented at auction, by the Viennese auction house WestLicht. The sale is scheduled for May 29, 2010 at their location in Vienna, Austria.  WestLicht does not state who the owner of the camera, only that it belonged to a family in northern Germany and was passed to the current owner by his father as a gift for passing his final apprenticeship as an optician. They also state it is in beautiful original condition, even coming with the original written instructions.

The outstanding original condition of the 170 year-old apparatus is remarkable. Every detail including the lens, the plaque signed by Daguerre himself, the black velvet interior and the ground-glass screen are in their original state.

The unique camera comes with the extremely rare original instructions in German with the title: “Praktische Beschreibung des Daguerreotyp’s”; published by Georg Gropius, Berlin 1839, 12×20cm, 24 pages with 18 illustrations in 5 plates showing the equipment used for producing Daguerreotypes in accordance with Daguerre’s invention. On the back of the little book there are two handwritten notes from 1840 with details of the process.

For comparison, a similar camera built by Susse Frères, also in 1839, was auctioned by WestLicht Auctions in 2007 for 576,000 Euros (~$800k) and set a record price for any camera at auction.  This auction is set to break this record.  It is estimated to bring in 500.000 – 700.00 Euros (~$700,000 – $1,000,000).

Hey!  We all knew this photography hobby was going to be expensive so buck up and make a bid.

A quick search of the term daguerreotype in the WorthPoint Worthopedia, a collection of over 50 million auctioned items,  returns quite a number of interesting items.  Daguerreotype photos, cameras, tripods, and even lens seem to have been a popular collectible over the past few years.  Photos from subsequent versions of the daguerreotype cameras are especially collectible like the image below taken during the Civil War sometime in the late 1850s or early 1860s.

If you are interested in more on the background, history and the science behind the Daguerréotype Giroux, I’ve included information from the WestLicht’’s press release after the jump.

The historical background

From the end of the 1820s the industrious stage-set painter and showman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and lithographer Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce have been carrying out joint experiments into a process for making images from a camera obscura permanent. In 1829 they form a company in order to develop this idea but Daguerre achieves the technical breakthrough only after Nièpce’s unexpected death in 1833. He refines the process and, at the end of 1838, finally manages to fix the chemically generated images permanently.

The public first learns of this pioneering invention on the 6th of January 1839 in the daily newspaper “La Gazette de France”. The article reveals almost no details. Thereafter events follow thick and fast. The day after the report is published, physicist and politician Francoise Jean Arago makes a fiery speech in which he declares Daguerre’s invention to be too important to be the concern of a single person and proposes that the French nation should make the invention of photography a present to the world.

The Chamber of Deputies in Paris enthusiastically accepts this idea and Daguerre and Isidor Nièpce, the son of his former partner, are awarded a life-long pension of 10,000 Francs per year in return. On the 19th of August 1839 the secret of the new process is revealed stimulating world-wide interest.

The news spreads like wildfire and on the 24th of August, punctually for the public announcement, the first advertisement for the Daguerreotype made by Alphonse Giroux et Cie is printed in the “Journal des Débats”. The announcement explicitly draws attention to the fact that production will be supervised by Daguerre himself and the reader is informed of the brochure which contains a detailed description of the process.

The booklet, which will soon be printed in numerous languages and will go through 32 editions, also contains precise plans of the camera developed by Daguerre.

Since the French nation has compensated him for his invention, Daguerre no longer has the exclusive rights to it but, as a good businessman, he finds ways of making money out of his name which is now famous all over the world. On the 22nd of June 1839, two months before the process was made public, he already signed a contract with Alphonse Giroux and the Susse Brothers. (Incidentally, an original Susse Frères camera was auctioned by WestLicht Auctions in 2007 for 576,000 Euros). In the contracts the two companies were given the exclusive rights to produce and sell the Daguerreotype and the other equipment necessary.

The famous optician Charles Chevalier expressed his disappointment at this agreement because he had been hoping to acquire it. After all, it had been Chevalier who had made the contact between Daguerre and Nièpce in 1826 and he had also been following their experiments over the years. In his biography the respected producer of scientific instruments commented on the choice of an interior decorator and a stationer for the production of the Daguerreotype with ridicule and a certain degree of annoyance. Despite (and because of) that position Chevalier was given the commission of producing the lenses for the cameras made by both companies.

The cameras produced by Daguerre’s brother-in-law are more opulently finished that those of the competition. Every Giroux camera has a golden plaque which, in addition to the maker’s mark, bears Daguerre’s personal signature. The selling price of 400 Francs was very high, representing approximately annual income of a normal working man. Under the terms of the contract Giroux was to have half the profits, Daguerre and Niépce taking equal shares of the remainder.

There is no record of the total number of cameras that Giroux produced but since cheaper and improved cameras came onto the market relatively quickly, it is assumed that the numbers were very limited. It can also be assumed that the Giroux Daguerreotype was only produced in 1839. Apparently Daguerre did not take the development of his camera any further. The inventor died in 1851 at the height of his worldwide fame.

On the functioning of the camera and the process

Making Daguerreotypes is a relatively involved process. Since the photographer has to ensure the light sensitivity of every photograph, he needs to have a lot of equipment with him. For open-air shots he must also carry a darkroom. For this reason the Daguerreotype was originally sold with everything necessary for the production of Daguerreotypes. All in all the required equipment weighed around 50 kilos and included in addition to the camera itself, fuming and mercury boxes, a spirit burner as well as the silver-covered copper plates and the necessary chemicals.

The camera itself consists of two boxes which are slide into each other and are made of different kinds of wood. The larger of the two, which has the lens attached to it, is fixed to the base plate. The back of the smaller box is either the ground glass plate or the holder insert and it fits into the forward box so that the whole is lightproof. The interior is lined with black velvet. In order to bring the image into focus the rear box is moved back or forwards along the wooden camera base.

It can then be fixed in position by means of a brass screw. A fold-out mirror behind the ground-glass screen allows the image to be seen while standing upright.

Initially Daguerre used plates of pure silver. Later, to save costs, they were made of silver-plated copper. Before the exposure was made the plates were fumed with iodine or bromine. This took place in a special wooden box with the aid of a spirit burner. Under the influence of this fuming process, light-sensitive silver iodide formed on the surface of the plate.

In order to maximise the brightness of the image while focussing, the lens’s outer brass fitting was removed. During the exposure the ground glass screen was exchanged for the (now) light sensitive plate (167 x 216 mm). Before the exposure was made the diaphragm was replaced and a swivelling cap served as a shutter. Daguerre suggested exposure times of between 3 and 30 minutes, depending on light conditions.

After the plate was exposed, the photograph was developed with the aid of mercury fumes which adhered to the surface producing a very faint silver image. Development and fixation in a salt or cyanide solution results in a positive image made of grey quicksilver. The tonality of the original pictures varied between grey and blue-grey but, after the introduction of gold toner, they could also be gold, purple or sepia-coloured.

Daguerreotypes are astoundingly finely nuanced and practically grainless – even when examined under a magnifying glass they exhibit very fine details. When they are framed in a way that excludes air they are extremely durable. Daguerreotypes are always unique and cannot be reproduced. This is also one of the reasons why they are such sought after and desirable collectors’ items nowadays.

Thanks for reading

I hope you found this information as interesting as I did.  Let me know if you plan on bidding during the auction so I don’t cross-bid you.  Hah!  (I wonder if it would fit on my Manfrotto tripod???)

What kind of photography collectibles do you own?

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West side of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge.  I noticed this effect in Lightroom when traversing the photos from this night’s shoot and thought it would make a good animated gif.  Hope you like it.

Thanks to @matthewdlyons for the Elements tip to create this.

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I’ve spent the past two weeks taking inventory of my online assets, something I would suggest everyone do at least once a year.  Just like spring cleaning the house, your online space can get cluttered.  This was a long and sometimes confusing process due to the number of sites, services and assets I involve myself with.  In fact it is still on going.  The goal is to streamline my online presence into a circular path where each node feeds the next.  My various interests should not be separate entities but a series of pieces that flow into each other to create a complete picture of who I am, what I’m looking for, and what I can provide for you.

The initial plan is to rebrand and redesign this site, create a professional photography services site, publish a social media resume page (more on that in a future post), and a new daily photoblog.   These are assets that I will own the domain and be 100% responsible for the content and functionality.  Then there are other sites I utilize like Facebook, LinkedIn, SmugMug and Twitter where I have limited control over my content and very little in the functionality side.  Last year I did not do much to integrate my sites and these services other than reposting blog articles.  To be truly successful online you must find the recipe that uses all of these ingredients in healthy balanced portions.  I’m pulling my chair up to the buffet and loading my plate with what I believe will sustain me best.

Here’s my plans for the upcoming months:

• I’m working with a talented graphics artist now to create new logos.  My plan is to have similar branding across all of my work whenever I can.
• Once the logos are complete I will start work on redesigning this site, removing the User 40.0 moniker and creating new content.   I expect this to be completed and launched in late February.
• Tonight I’ve launched a new photoblog named Marc-a-Day.  If you can’t get enough of me here then go check it out and get some of me everyday.  This is not me taking a photo a day, I’ve failed too many times at that, but I will post a new, hopefully interesting, image a day.
• Two more sites will soon to follow, a new photography service offering along with an expanded social resume site.  I currently have a domain at marcbentonresume.com with a small social profile but I plan to expand this to include more of my professional background and also include a video or two on it.
• Photoblogging DC was both a success and failure.  Success as I was able to talk a number of truly talented photographers to contribute and our daily visits were steadily growing.  The failure was in the way the site was designed.  It was dependent on one person to format and publish the posts, something that eventually I was unable to keep up with.  I hope by the Spring to bring this site back with a better design where our contributors will have more functionality in the system.
• Sherri and I plan to organize more photowalks through this site and the Photowalk DC Facebook group.  Look for a late-February event announced soon.

We’ve recently kicked off a new decade.  Its time to let go of the baggage of the past and start anew.  I hope we all enjoy the trip together.

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…up to the elbow you say Dianne?  Oh, we’re back…and now to Ollie Williams for our Blaccueather report.  Ollie is on the road in Columbus, OH. How’s the weather out there Ollie?
ITS COLD!!!
Thank you for that riveting report Ollie.  Lets move on to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa’s photos of Columbus and Dublin (insert racial sterotype here):

Stay warm everyone and most importantly…be safe!

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Sherri and I went to see Avatar in 3-d at an IMAX theater in Alexandria only to find that it was sold out until Monday.  We ended up in Old Town playing dominos at Starbucks.  Before we left we braved the frigid temps to take a peek at the waterfront.  This moonlight was coming from this year’s Blue Moon.

This was taken hand held with a 50mm 1.4 lens.  Processed on my new ASUS Eee netbook in Lightroom.  I do not have all my plugins and add-ons loaded yet so there was no noise reduction ran against this image.

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Media/Bloggers tables

Anthony Pappas:  Brand Building 101

Bloggers Blogging

Rieva Lesonsky:  Becoming an Entrepreneurial Leader

(cc) GrowSmartBiz Small Business Conference Sept 29 2009 pictures courtesy Marc Benton and the Social media team at www.networksolutions.com Please credit as above if you use these pictures.

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