Antiquing
I had another wild week. Lots of shoots. Lots of trips to Cape Elizabeth. Four consecutive days shooting in C.E., at the lighthouse, the beach, and the fancy and historic Inn by the Sea. The gig at Inn by the Sea was a full day wedding but all other shoots were just short engagement or portrait sessions. Because of this I tried to treat myself to some Portland-area shopping sprees. One day I checked out the two great used book stores downtown, Green Hand and Yes Books. Both shops are dusty and messy in the tradition of all great, sprawling book stores. Unfortunately they both have the audacity to actually know the value of their inventory so there weren't any particularly good deals on photobooks, my personal obsession, but I found some good copies of old, trashy Charles Willeford novels. At the start of the pandemic I tore through his late-career trilogy of Miami-based detective novels. His older, pulpier books are hard to find, so this was a real treat.
Then on a whim I checked out a great antique shop in Cape Elizabeth called The Artful Collector. They had some really great stuff! Most surprisingly they had a huge collection of publisher proof pages from a large book of Edward Curtis's photographs, released in the 1970s. Obviously Curtis's work is controversial, so I felt weird about buying them. That being said it was wild to see these rare, giant prints for sale. There were DOZENS of them, and in my opinion they were VERY affordable. A little less problematically, they also had some really beautiful old photographs, mostly tintypes and glass negatives. Most of them were from the "cabinet card" craze of the late 1800s. I had to restrain myself from getting too many, but I still got a lot. I scanned them and I'll include them below.
I love how they add a little pink tint to the cheeks. I also got two glass plates taken on a cruise ship to Algiers. The glass plates would have let them reproduce the images to sell to the people on the cruise. The tintypes are typically one of a kind, done very quickly in a studio. I love this stuff.
I always welcome tips and suggestions for other places to find old pictures, cameras, and photo books.
The shoots this week were fun. I'll share some wedding pictures from Saturday.
This week will be bonkers - I will have a real estate shoot, three engagement shoots, and a private school building/student life highlight shoot, whatever that is. Wish me luck.
