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Nikon F100, Nikkor AF 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 D IF, Ilford HP5 Plus

(not a vintage photo, but one of the closest I have taken ;)

Lately I have started following a few vintage photograph blogs.  One of them is the Shorpy Historical Photo Archive which features photos taken in the United States mostly between the 1850’s and 1950’s.

The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner born around the turn of the last century.  It is amazing to think that it was still a few more decades to go before he would have benefited from the first federal laws regulating minimum age of employment.

The Shorpy images are mostly sourced from the Library of Congress archive. Then the blog webmaster takes up to a few hours per image cleaning them up to have good detail, contrast, etc.

Here are a few of my favorites so far.

I love the look of these older photos, mostly taken via wet or dry plate processes on large format cameras.  They have an amazing amount of detail and broad exposure range.

Written by Bubble Level

Jamie Zucek lives in California and enjoys film and digital photography, collecting and shooting vintage and modern cameras whenever he can.

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