Revisiting some old pictures taken with a very simple camera

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NY Street Vendor.

Back in 2012 I posted some pictures taken with a “plastic fantastic” Bell and Howell Camera (see Bell & Howell). I don’t know how long the film had been in that camera (probably years) and the scans were poor and low resolution (done in a local CVS). The colors were also way off, a situation which I solved at that time by converting the images to black and white.

I recently came across these images again and this time I decided to see if I could correct the colors. This is the result – not great, but not too bad for a crummy plastic camera.

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42nd street around First Avenue looking West.

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Entrance courtyard at Tudor City.

The chair in the corner

by Posted in Black & White, Things Leave a comment
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The original color version of this picture was all earth tones: browns, oranges etc. At first I was inclined to post it that way, but then I thought – what would it look like in black and white? The initial answer was – terrible!!! All of the colors converted into similar tones and the whole thing just blended together into a mess. At that point I was set to go back to the color version. But then I thought – no, this is a challenge. Can I make a decent black and white picture out of this? After some tinkering around HSL/Color/B&W panel in Lightroom and other assorted plugins I came up with this. I’m quite pleased with the end result.

Springwood – Seated FDR and Eleanor group

by Posted in Statues, Things Leave a comment
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Located near the Vistor’s Center at Springwood a nearby sign reads: “This statue is adapted from a 1933 photograph in the FDR Library of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt on the south lawn of their Hyde Park home”. Unfortunately it didn’t say who the sculptor was. Perhaps there was another sign and I missed it (quite possible as I had already been soaked while walking the dog and it was still raining when I went out to take this picture so I didn’t spend long outside looking).

According to Waymarking.com:

A bronze sit-by-me sculpture of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt is base (sic) on a photograph taken on the south lawn of their home in Hyde Park, NY. Eleanor is sitting on a chair while Franklin is seated on the right side of a bench. They are seated around a small circular table which contains two closed books and an open book.

Eleanor is wearing a dress with a half-sleeve jacket. She has her hands at waist level and her legs are crossed, left over right. Franklin is wearing a business suit and tie. He has his right arm on the back of the bench and his left hand on the opened book. There is space to sit to Franklin’s right and left.

The sculpture was created by Studio EIS of New York City, cast at the Tallix foundry and copyrighted in 2008. For more information on the foundry see the 2015 New York Times article: At Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry, Master of Metals Is Artists’ Ally

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Springwood – Fala

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Fala was FDR’s Scottish Terrier. Fala was devoted to him and FDR was devoted to Fala.

One story in particular resonated in this election season of insults and attacks. It seems that FDR had been insulted by his Republican opponents (it seems not much has changed). In response he had these words to say during on of his radio broadcasts:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.

Source: “1944 Radio News, 1944-09-23 FDR Teamsters Union Address – Fala (27:45–30:08)”. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2014-06-02. The speech itself can be found here.

Apparently the idea to turn the Republican attack into a joke came from no less a person than Orson Welles.

Fala’s devotion to FDR seems to have continued beyond the grave. According to Fala Still Seeking His Master Franklin Roosevelt he:

…roams Washington Square Park in search of the thirty-second president of the United States. He had been the dog of Franklin but not really Eleanor Roosevelt. She declared that the dog just barely tolerated her but adored his master. Fala knew Washington Square Park well, when Eleanor lived at 29 Washington Square West from 1942 to 1949. This had been intended to be the urban digs for FDR because it was wheelchair accessible.

I imagine that FDR’s love of dogs (which I can understand. I’m pretty fond of terriers myself) is the reason why Springwood is so “dog friendly”. And thankfully it is or Harley and myself would have been standing in the rain for 1 1/2 hours waiting for my wife and brother-in-law to finish at the Presidential Library.

Springwood – On the trails

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When we arrived at Springwood the rain had more or less stopped so while my wife and brother-in-law did the tour, I went exploring with the dog. After walking around a bit near the house I was pleased to discover that there is a fairly extensive system of trails. They meander around the property and then go off in one direction up to Val-Kill and Top Cottage; and in the other into the neighboring Vanderbilt Property.

Not far from the beginning of the trail you pass an orchard with a nice view back to the house (see picture above).

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Farther along I passed these odd structures. The one on the right appeared to be a seat of some kind, but I have no idea what the other one (on the left) is.

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Continuing you pass a waterfall.

We kept walking but as we did so the rain was getting worse and worse. After about thirty minutes I could see that Harley was not enjoying the walk too much (and he’s usually pretty blasé about rain) so we turned around and walked thirty minutes back to the Visitor’s Center. By this time we were both soaked. Luckily the Visitor’s Center is dog friendly so we were able to sit indoors to dry out and wait for the others to finish their tour.

I’d like to come back on a nicer day and explore the trails more thoroughly.