Sentiments for the new year from Takashi Arai

From yesterday’s Smithsonian Blog, this example of dedication to the daguerreian arts:

“After 20 minutes of rest Blondin began the journey to the other side, this time with a Daguerreotype camera strapped to his back. He advanced 200 feet, affixed his balancing pole to the cable, untied his load, adjusted it in front of him and snapped a likeness of the crowd along the American side. Then he hoisted the camera back into place and continued on his way. The entire walk from bank to bank to bank took 23 minutes, and Blondin immediately announced an encore performance to take place on the Fourth of July”.

Just in from Eric Mertens, this little safety reminder concerning an industrial bromine spill in Chelyabinsk, Russia. The Gizmodo article accompanying the video makes the assertion that the cloud you see is the result of only 10 gallons being released. Regardless of the truth of that, let’s all be careful out there.

Original Gizmodo article

5 more submissions for the juried exhibit.

Folllowing on from our recent post about the oldest living daguerreian here is an image from possibly the youngest. 8 year old Grania operated the camera and lenscap entirely by herself and timed the exposure (with a little help from Dad with a lightmeter)…

Welcome to the new version of the community website for contemporary daguerreotypes. The expanded editorial team has created what we hope you will think is a great new look for the site and has chosen a simple, but evocative new name. We envisage the addition of a wiki here as a powerful new information tool to enhance the blog and the forum.

A new banner with images that automatically refresh shows enticing portions of images by daguerreians who have galleries on the site. When you click on an image it will take you straight to the gallery of the artist who created it.

The forum section has new software but all the old posts are there as are the ones in the blog. We hope you will like the clean, simple structure and the speed boost the new forum software provides.

The back-end integration of blog and forum isn’t quite complete yet, your logins are the same for both but in the interim you will have to re-enter them from blog to forum and vice versa. Eventually a single logon will access everything.

Regards

the editorial team:

Alan Bekhuis
Jon Lewis
Andy Stockton

For those of you looking for a traditional ambience to your studio, a new listing on ebay just might be the ticket… or not, an unusual item but probably not destined for the Resources page.

We all know one of the most difficult things about making daguerreotypes, especially for beginners, is the lack of equipment. As such, Alan and I thought it important to have a place to buy, sell, and trade daguerreian equipment and supplies. I am proud to announce the Daguerreian Marketplace as the fourth section of the forum. It is only viewable by members of the forum so log in or sign up.

Enjoy!
Jon Lewis

Keeping the galleries section international are the Daguerreotypes of Åke Hultman. Åke comes from Sweden and uses both the cold mercury and Becquerel processes.