Glass Plate

Found and restored 1910 glass plates show the positive impact of pets on our lives

Nov 14, 2022 by Dunja Djudjic 2 Comments

I believe we are all aware that pets can make our lives so much better. While in the modern day we have pet clothes, hotels, bakeries, and of course, photo contests, people from 100 years ago weren’t as devoted to their pets as we are today. Or were they?

Mathieu Stern explored a bunch of Victorian-era glass prints. He spent hours in Photoshop and gave them a new life, but he discovered something interesting along the way. It appears that people in these photos thought of their pets as family members just as we do today.

[Read More…]

Rare glass plate propaganda photos of Hitler digitised into US National Archive

Apr 26, 2019 by John Aldred 5 Comments

1,270 of 41,000 glass negatives created by Hitler’s personal photographer and “key propagandist”, Heinrich Hoffman have been scanned into the US National Archives. Many of these negatives were broken and had to be reassembled in a process taking around 9 months to complete, overseen by Richard E. Schneider.

[Read More…]

Photographer coloured a 100 year old glass plate portrait in Photoshop using neural networks

Aug 3, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment

There’s something special about shooting analogue black and white for me. It takes on a quality and a character you just don’t get with modern colour digital. Fortunately, now, we have a choice. So, if we want to shoot flawless colour, we can. A hundred years ago, there wasn’t so much choice.

We’ve featured Mathieu Stern before. He makes some great videos reviewing old lenses and offering tricks and tips. In his latest video, Mathieu shares some personal family history with us. A trip back through the generations to find a photograph of his great, great, great uncle, Mr Albert.

[Read More…]

Take a look inside Ansel Adams’ amazing Darkroom

Jul 8, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment

The room in which Ansel Adams created many of his works has to be the absolute ultimate DIY darkroom. Back then, many things had to be made yourself as commercially available tools for most of what Ansel wanted or needed to do simply did not exist.

In this video from Marc Silber, we’re guided through Ansel’s darkroom and processes by his son, Michael. With motorised dolly tracks and an enlarger that holds an array of individually controlled light bulbs, this darkroom features some very interesting and unique engineering.

[Read More…]