35 posts tagged “japan”
Quoth Okinawa Soba:
Well, what do you know. I just pulled down a box of old T. ENAMI lantern-slides that were on a top shelf, and this was in it. I put it on a piece of cheap plastic with a fluorescent light behind it, then I shot it with a hand-held digital camera. The "auto white balance" committed suicide, and left me with this color -- even the AUTO COLOR button of PICASA decided to leave it this way. I'm sure Enami would have approved (???).
The BIG TREE to the right of the man is the same one seen just down the trail a bit in this "blue view" -- probably taken only a few minutes prior : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/2351811408/
So, what do you prefer.... the Blue Mist...or this Yellow Mist?
After over 5,000 views, the above "Yellow Version" gets the votes of most flickr members, leaving its blue-variant "sister version" in the dust --- er, the MIST !!!
If you like these kind of shots, you can see more of them in my flickr SET of "MIST, HAZE, and FOG in OLD JAPAN".
Ca.1898 Hand-tinted lantern-slide by T. ENAMI, Japan's Meiji-era Master of the small-format image. www.t-enami.org/
Okinawa Soba writes:
Ca.1880s image by KIMBEI KUSAKABE. Notice the in house water wheel with the mill race running under the structure (instead of beside it, which is usually the case) and then below a low walkway.
Hmmm... A river flowing under a building ?
Sorry, Frank Lloyd Wright, but your beautiful FALLING WATER home in Pennsylvania, USA was beat-to-the-punch by these old Farmers in Japan.
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NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS PHOTOGRAPH !!!The above photograph is one of sixteen early collodion images on glass that I am posting as a group --- and all of these beautiful, hand-tinted slides were made without the benefit of GELATIN.
Before getting into what collodion is all about, let's first cover gelatin.
As most folks know (or might not know), gelatin is the all-important carrier substance used to make the photo-sensitive emulsion coatings for all films --- from 35mm to Sheet Film, and from X-Ray to Spectrometer Films --- as well as the films for our favorite motion pictures, and the photographic prints that fill our albums and preserve our memories.
This also means that all of you digital folks become gelatin users every time you get your photos printed out at the local photo shop or drug store. It has been this way in the world of commercial photography for well over 100 years now. Even as we surround ourselves with chemical miracles of the 21st Century, no substance has yet been found that beats Gelatin for the hard-copy world of film and print photography.
GELATIN
GELATIN, of course, is made from the rendered SKIN AND BONES OF SLAUGHTERED ANIMALS. The Wiki also puts it bluntly : "Gelatin is a protein.....extracted from the bones, connective tissues organs, and some intestines of animals such as domesticated cattle, pigs, and horses". That is to say, the meat is STRIPPED FROM THE CARCASS and sent off to McDonald’s, while any skin that cannot be used for leather, the bones and ligaments, and the rest of the guts not fit for consumption (or sausage and baloney) are sent off elsewhere to be boiled down to give you GELATIN.
ANIMAL-LOVING VEGETARIANS & PETA MEMBERS TAKE NOTE !!!
If you are one of those Vegetarian VEGAN types who is also a PHOTOGRAPHER or an avid MOVIE GOER, you can read the following link and weep. After which, you may go and copy all of your print photos over to digital before going out and burning the originals (in order to cleanse your conscience and your immortal soul). Then, you can send me all of your nice film cameras, which you won't be using any more! Come to think of it, I will really miss seeing you over at the Movie Theater, too.....boo hoo :
HOLLYWOOD and BOLLYWOOD
The American Humane Association is the source of the "No animals were harmed....." disclaimer seen in most movie end-credits. One of their first basic principles in issuing this seal is that No animal will be injured or harmed for the sake of a film production. However, the simple fact is quite the opposite in that, for the sake of a film production, KODAK, FUJI, and AGFA all depend on carnivorous man's love of a good hamburger and pork chop in order to avail themselves of the slaughtered carcasses needed to produce the very film itself for almost every movie you've ever seen.
In the case of BOLLYWOOD, I find it interesting that Hindus (whose general vegetarian stance is far more culturally and religiously rooted than just a personal aversion to meat) are very supportive of the Film Industry in general, and pack out theaters on a regular basis to enjoy the latest flicks.
"....Hinduism is based on the concept of omni-presence of the Almighty, and the presence of a soul in all creatures, including bovines. Thus, by that definition, killing any animal would be a sin: one would be obstructing the natural cycle of birth and death of that creature, and the creature would have to be reborn in that same form because of its unnatural death......" (Wiki)
Apparently, it is a sin to kill and eat a Cow, but all is forgiven as long as you transform the slaughtered carcass into a song-and-dance number on the Silver Screen ! On the other hand, somebody might have failed to inform them of the source of their cinematic pleasures, and the old adage "Ignorance is Bliss" accounts for the success of Bollywood in a nation that is 80% Hindu.
So you see, the art and perusal of Photography and Film can and does touch on some of our most personal convictions, as well as aspects of religion and culture. Some might say it is better to "let sleeping dogs lie" when it comes to these matters, however, as adult members of the flickr photography community, these things are well within the bounds of serious discussion.
COLLODION
On the other hand, the early photographers side-stepped the slaughter of animals, and went through a 20 to 30 year period (and perhaps 50 years for die-hards) of using COLLODION to make the glass-plate negative emulsions. Generally speaking, Collodion is specially prepared COTTON dissolved in ALCOHOL. At one stage of the preparation, the COTTON BALLS became what is known a GUN COTTON, which was highly explosive. If the photographer (or chemist) was not careful, you could say they would get a REAL BANG out of their new-fangled hobby of taking pictures !!!
The details are HERE :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion
and HERE :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose
The image posted above is a hand colored, collodion POSITIVE made by copying (or contact printing from) a collodion NEGATIVE. Due to an optical illusion property of the developed collodion on glass, the negative itself could have been cased as an AMBROTYPE with the proper black backing behind the image to make it magically appear as a positive.
The same "negative approach" would make a TINTYPE, but instead putting the emulsion on glass, it is exposed and developed on black-lacquered (or "Japanned") metal sheets --- where the negative would also appear as a positive to the eye. The same emulsion used for all of the above processes was the same collodion. Only the presentation was different !
By the way, except for the SALT PRINT Set, most of the old JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS posted on my photostream are coated with neither Collodion, nor Gelatin. Instead, the image is contained in an emulsion made of ALBUMEN --- all from the egg whites of endless, clucking Chickens. Back in the 1860s, one photographic outfit in New York had a Chicken Coop out back that produced 10,000 eggs a day in order to keep up with the demand for photographic papers coated with albumen !
As for you poor VEGAN folks who think you must now write off seeing movies as a way to "Save the Animals", please have no fear, and do not suffer. Just stick to motion pictures made with the RED ONE camera that go straight to DVD !
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Company
DISCLAIMER
Lest there be any misunderstanding, Okinawa_Soba should state that, although I love animals as much as the next guy, and do exercise a certain level of animal ethics, I am not an official member of PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals]. Rather, I'm a life-long member of that other PETA group --- People Eating Tasty Animals !.
I am also one whose heart has been hardened to the point where I can sit through the latest BLOCKBUSTER films over at the local Cineplex --- eating my popcorn while the story unfolds on the screen at 24 frames-per-second, with light from the projector lamp blazing through miles of motion picture film coated with the rendered remains of untold numbers of slaughtered cows.
As for Slaughtered Pigs and Horses.... Gummy Bears, Jello, or Marshmallows, anyone ?
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TECHNICAL NOTESWET COLLODION..... or DRY COLLODION ?
".....So far as we know....professional slide producers use either photo-mechanical...or the wet collodion process, while the amateur as a rule uses one or other of the gelatin processes......."
----- Andrew Pringle, LANTERN SLIDES BY PHOTOGRAPHIC METHODS, 1897
".......Whether the finest lantern slides are those produced by the wet collodion process may, or may not be so, yet it is a fact that collodion lantern slides possess a resplendence, sparkle, and clearness often absent in slides made by other processes. In distinction from gelatin, collodion slides do not melt [in the heat of the projector]. The usual method of producing the slides is by copying the negative in the camera, although it is possible to make lantern slides by contact [printing] upon a wet collodion plate by use of a well-varnished negative that is slightly separated from the wet plate by a well-oiled mask of heavy paper. However, [it is better to copy the negative] using a camera....."--- Edward C. Worden, NITROCELLULOUSE INDUSTRY, 1911
No matter if they were contact printing these slides, or putting the still-wet copy plate into a film holder and thus into the copy camera, it was a very messy business, and we should be appreciative of their efforts. After all, their careful patience for even one day of labor in and out of a dark tent resulted in these images still being with us after over 120 years.Here is one annotated photo from the 1870s offering more proof that these slides were actually made while still wet with the sticky, and sometimes drippy emulsion :
www.flickr.com/photos/20939975@N04/2134049400/
On the other hand, although wet-plate collodion emulsions were NO GOOD when they dried out (usually within 10 minutes or so of coating the glass), experimenters tried everything to get them to remain sensitive --- including soaking in Beer, Coffee, or anything else they could grab from the kitchen or the chemist, all hoping to discover a successful DRY COLLODION process.
Some Westerners had limited success, and at least one old 19th Century book gives directions on how to get your "wet plate" to work after drying out --- with the only drawback being that exposure times in a camera were 20 times longer than normal !
So, if our Japanese photographer friends got tired of the messy wet plates to make these beautiful slides, perhaps they tried some secret methods now lost to us --- like treating their plates with SOY SAUCE and WASABI in order to get these messy glass "films" to work when dry !!!
In the end, they all said "to hell with collodion", and switched over to the much faster and very dry Gelatin coated plates.
But now our rights are barred, our passports void;
We live self-exiled from our heavenlier home.
An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
Captured and driven in Life's nescient grasp,
Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,
It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,
The natural privilege of unfallen gods,
Recalling still its old lost sovereignty.
From Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind
Not just expats. Remember these days, on average, 94 Japanese kill themselves daily. At least some of these commuters are well paid slaves.
See also my latest photos
You can see this also here: www.ipernity.com/doc/manganite/227117
Okinawa Soba writes:
Ca. 1890-1900 albumen print of a fine group of Ainu who look "none too happy" about having their photo taken --- except for that little kid sitting right in the middle who looks like he's trying to smother a good laugh.
The Ainu were in Japan long before the modern day Japanese "Yamato" breed showed up. Like "indigenous priors" in many countries, the Ainu were put down by the invaders and occupiers. It's a complicated story.
The Japanese Govenment did not like them at all, and even the Japanophiles of the day (who spent most of their time praising Japan and the Geisha Girls to high heaven) could not help but show their disgust at the Japanese Govenment's prejudicial treatment of the Ainu.
Incredibly, until this year (2008), the Japanese Government refused to acknowledge their very existence in Japan, telling themselves and the world that Japan had NO indigenous peoples, and that Japan consisted of only "one homogeneous race and culture".
Of course, the rest of the world knows that Japan's official pronouncements are always full of raw BS on most things pertaining to reality, and when push came to shove, they finally had to come HALF WAY clean on the matter.
The OTHER HALF of the problem yet to be dealt with --- admitting that the indigenous Okinawans (and their Language and Culture) at the southern end of the country also constitute another distinct "non-Japanese people" within their borders --- is still too hard for the Bureaucrats in Tokyo to come to grips with. The existence of Okinawa and the "Ryukyu Islanders" remains a major obstacle in their continuing theory of Japan being a nation of "One Supreme Race".
But, for a a Government that hates moving too fast on anything, half way is a first step.
".......On 6 June 2008, a bi-partisan, non-binding resolution was approved by the Japanese Diet calling upon the government to recognize the Ainu people as indigenous to Japan and urge an end to discrimination against the group. The resolution recognized the Ainu people as "an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture" and rescinds the law passed in 1899. Though the resolution is historically significant, Hideaki Uemura, professor at Keisen University in Tokyo and a specialist in indigenous peoples' rights, commented that the motion is "weak in the sense of recognizing historical facts" as the Ainu were "forced" to become Japanese in the first place........" (Wiki)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_(people)
PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTE :
Most all of the women in this photo have tattooed mustaches. However, the film (or dry plate) used for this shot was not sensitive to the pigments used, and so they are very light in this picture. Early Meiji-era photographers had a lot of trouble getting good tattoo shots of any Japanese due to the same color spectrum sensitivity limitations, and many tattoos had to be strengthened by the early colorists during the hand-tinting stage of print making.
This albumen print courtesy of the Tom Burnett Collection. Used by permission.
t.enami via Okinawa Soba
Ca1892-95. By T. ENAMI of Yokohama. Hand-tinted Glass slide. From Enami's earliest period. www.t-enami.org/
Nachosan's photostream
Nachosan writes:
When I first proposed to my wife the idea of going to Nagano to photograph the snow monkeys she was really skeptical about the whole notion of going to some remote location and having to trek 2 kilometers through some path in the mountains just to see some monkeys.
With time it only became worst as she asked all her friends and family in Japan who all found the whole idea really silly and typical gaijin thing to do. She went along with, nonetheless, cause she could tell it meant alot to me. At the end of the day, I do believe that it is possible she enjoyed it a tad more than I did, and that's something hard to believe.
jpdodd's
World War II Photos (Set)
J.P. Dodd writes:
Rather than working today (which I should be doing), I have been going through scans of pictures that my grandfather took during World War II. This is by far my favorite. The man's expression is priceless.
The back of the picture says Okinawa Native, Sept. 1945 .
*When English speaking people answer the phone they say "Hello."; Japanese say "Moshi moshi."
