Remembering Fotomat on Our Nostalgic Memories Blog

Courtesy of Our Nostalgic Memories

Came across this blog post today while checking in on Google+. It is a detailed history of Fotomat, which started in 1965 and only closed completely in 2009. To be honest I didn’t realize it lasted that long!

I used Fotomat services in the 1980s, dropping off at my local kiosk in Shoreline WA.  I still have a few packs of negatives in Fotomat containers today.  Even some Kodachrome slides which were sent out for develop and mount.  In my neck of the woods, many of the remaining kiosks were repurposed as espresso stands.

Check out the blog post HERE at Our Nostalgic Memories!

Timeless Style – 30 Reasons to love the Photography of Willem van de Poll

This pensive pose by a Paris model comes to you courtesy of a photographer I had never heard of.

In fact, it was like an act of Congress to find anything good – in English – about Willem van de Poll (1895 – 1970).  He studied photography in Vienna, and worked as a freelance press photographer throughout Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia and the Caribbean during his long career. His photographs depict life and products of the mid 20th century, with most shots being done in black and white.  Thankfully I did find a Wiki page about him in Dutch.

His style was sleak and timeless, while the lighting was often impeccable.

Evidenced above, van de Poll was able to portray a softer positive side of life in an unobtrusive way.  I would almost call him a street photographer, because many of his photos – part of a veritable truckload – seem to have that “on-the-fly” feel of his contemporaries Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier; what set him apart from others of his time was a street photo style with polish, a dedication that discounted the notion that he simply leveled a camera and shot.  While Cartier-Bresson and Maier are better known, and seemed to catch people at their most vulnerable moments, van de Poll seemed to catch them often at their most beautiful.  His unplanned photos are as uplifting and have as much detail as the shots he set up.

I am confused on why I’ve never heard of him until now.

Below you’ll find 30 reasons to love the photography of Willem van de Poll, representing the thousands of photos he took during his lifetime.  By looking through them, I think you’ll discover – like I did – a great photographer and treasure from the era that should have more notoriety.

——————

About Willem van de Poll (in Dutch) – http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_van_de_Poll
Photos in Dutch National Archive – At Gahetna.nl

Twin Lens Reflex Camera

A few years ago I found this squirreled away in a cabinet, along with a treasure trove of family slides taken by my in-laws. After researching the camera on the internet I found out that the film it used was obsolete but still available from a couple of sources. I just got some color film for it in the mail, and have started taking pictures with it this week. It’s quite an experience to us this camera.

Here’s my write-up at Rusty Camera.

2/4/2012 – Here’s my write-up on the first roll of film through the camera! – http://rustycamera.posterous.com/yashica-44lm-first-roll-through-in-40-years

Flash Bulbs Baby!

Capturing those special moments in the past was a bit tougher back in the Sixties.

There were no smartphones with LED flashes to light the subject (or illuminate the subject’s eyes in a weird glow). Getting those great shots of Aunt Edna and Uncle Ted’s Fiftieth at the Lodge meant coming armed with equipment to light up the wood paneling inside the hall.

It also meant having plenty of flash bulbs.

These single-use wonders would pop off like an atomic bomb and be done.  The light was brilliant, and then it was gone.  The hot little bulbs had to be extracted with a cloth due the residual heat. Hey, getting the right shot was hard work back in the day!

I’m old enough to have used them as a kid, especially the Flash Cubes below:

The world has changed, and the bulbs to feed the flashes are getting tougher to find. But for now they are solid artifacts that – to the smartphone generation – may need to be explained.

Edna and Ted would definitely approve 🙂

Tube Socks and Urethane

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Steve Lundeen has the monumental – and voluntary – task of archiving his late father-in-law’s photographs.  After all, the man he is preserving on the Internet through Flickr took thousands upon thousand of photos.

Nick DeWolf was a scientist, dreamer, and voracious photographer who documented the world around him – pretty much for the heck  of it – from the 1950s until his death in 2006.   As of this writing, Steve had scanned and posted over 52,000 of Nick’s photos.  His scenes were of everything: people, buildings, cars, landscapes, boats, and tons throughout North America.  He had an eye for reality; rather than capturing what a marketing firm wanted the viewer to remember of the time, Nick had the ability to save the real world.  He saw the warmth of life and somehow harnessed it on film.  While the photos here are clearly from the late 1970s, the subject matter doesn’t look so out of date that it makes the viewer laugh.  Nick’s gift seemed to come from stealth, a long lens, and knowing where to put his subject almost without looking.

The pictures depicted here are only a few of his shots from an unnamed skateboarding championship that occurred in Aspen Colorado during the summer of 1977.  The colors are beautiful.  The subject matter so very 70s.  There are over 100 photos from the meet in Nick’s Roll # 97, compiled with others from a backyard trampoline party and a horse show.  All told, there are nearly 900 photos in that collection alone.

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

Photo Credit: Nick DeWolf

—————————————–

Nick Dewolf’s Aspen Roll, 1977 – reel #97

Orange Top [1970]

I love photography from the late 1960s and early 1970s; people experimented with perspective, and created looks that were new and bold.  I won’t say anything about the top’s color, because the model is hot enough to make Orange Circus Peanuts look good!

———————–

McCall’s Winter 1970-71 Issue