Alan Murgatroyd, a friend now living in New Zealand happened upon this blog recently and revealed that although we know him as a retired airline pilot, he was originally destined to be a photographer. Although much of his reminiscence deals with the technical aspects of photography at the time, he also helped his father who was an early wedding photographer.
As you pore over the hundreds of photographs your wedding photographer and PHP Weddings will send you – this is how it used to be …..
My father operated as a still photographer – black and white ½-plate camera mostly – until around the mid-fifties, when he switched to 12 on 120 with the Zeiss Super Ikonta range. He carried three identical cameras which gave 36 shots without stopping to reload, and the 2 ¼ in sq. format meant that the camera didn’t have to be turned on the tripod – the decision as to whether it should be vertical or horizontal could be made in the printing room. He never “stooped” to 35 mm until he had to include colour transparencies as an option when he added a Voigtlander Bessamatic to his bag.
Initially, he had the wedding party travel via the studio on the way to the reception, and used a Thornton-Pickard whole plate camera, with powerful tungsten lights, and controlled daylight i.e. glass roof with moveable gauze curtains and different backgrounds on roller blinds behind the subjects. He later modified the plate holders so that he could take two shots on each whole plate, and eventually switched to cut film and a spring loaded back to replace the double glass plate holders.
He finally had to give in and go out to the churches when a competitor started up with a gang of ‘cowboys’ to each of whom he gave a 35 mm camera and told them to muscle in on any church ceremony without permission, then sell the photographs on commission after the event.
He never embraced cine.
Some vicars banned cameras in church, but most would allow a discreet tripod at the back of the church, looking down the aisle, or in the gallery. Nothing too close to the altar, or the ceremony. We knew the opening lines …….. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to day ……… very well !
As a studio operator copyright was often an issue, customers would often demand their portrait negatives, which was refused, the argument being that as money had changed hands the copyright belonged to the customer, but the negative belonged to the photographer, to whom re-prints usually represented the only profit opportunity. He would place enlargements in the shop window, usually without permission, but nobody ever complained.
I started to follow in his footsteps, completing a 5 year apprenticeship with an Elsam, Mann & Cooper in Liverpool, situated in The Temple on Dale St. at the bottom of Moorfields, down which I dashed most mornings off the electric train from Southport. (‘The Cavern’ of later Beatle fame was in the basement off the courtyard, but was just an irritating noisy night-club of dubious repute then!) and they opened a branch in Manchester, to which I was once ‘seconded’. Messrs E.M.& C. were all ex-apprentices of Stewart Bale Ltd. a very well known Liverpool photographer of the time.
When I was deemed responsible enough to represent the firm on my own, I was allowed a 12×10 plate camera with 6 double dark glass plate holders and a selection of lenses – weighed a ton – and given the Cammell Laird jobs, which meant climbing twice to the top of one of the hammerhead cranes first with the camera, then with the tripod and reversing the procedure when I had finished. We never used a shutter, but stopped the lens down to f32 or f64 and took the lens cap off for the required length of time – which you judged. Lifting the cap off upwards and back down ensured that the sky got less exposure and so wasn’t overexposed. I was with Mr. Elsam one day when he was asked how he knew how long to leave the cap off. He replied that photographers were born with a bell in their head, and when the bell rang the cap was replaced. Rarely did we get unuseable negatives, but hand printing contact prints in a 12×10 frame allowed for a lot of correction !
One day, having completed the photography, the crane driver took pity on me and, to save me a second climb to collect the tripod, offered to lower it down to the ground on his ‘lunch line’. Since I could only manage all the little ladders carrying one item, either camera bag or tripod this would be a great help. I’m reminded of this every time I hear the Gerard Hoffnung piece about the barrel of bricks – because when I was halfway down I was overtaken by the tripod, now separated from the ‘lunch line’! I took it back to work remarking that only 2 legs were smashed, and was curtly told that it only had 3 to start with!
We made colour prints using Kodak Dye Transfer. Three negatives taken through red, green and blue filters were then printed on positive film, the density of the image being represented by thickness of gelatine rather than blackness of image. Thicker gelatine absorbed more of the dye when they were placed in trays of Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow dye. After about 10 mins. soaking the Cyan positive was ‘fixed’ in a bath of acetic acid, the surplus rinsed off and then “squeegeed” on to the paper and left long enough for all the Dye to Transfer. After it was removed a clear film was placed over it and the Magenta positive placed on top. When one was satisfied that it was precisely registered it was securely clipped at one edge, peeled back and the clear film removed before it was the squeeged on to the print. The same procedure was then followed with the Yellow positive.
The non-achromatic lenses that we used at the time created different sized images from the blue, red and green filtered negatives, even though the camera wasn’t moved between the three exposures, and so when printing the positive gelatine images through the enlarger a micrometer adjustment was provided, otherwise one would get slight colour edges to various parts of the image. Of course, registering them correctly on the final prints was essential, a purely manual process requiring keen eyesight. Clearly, only still life studio subjects could be photographed. It took about a week to produce one print from start to finish, because each process needed a long processing and drying period before the next could be continued.
Reflect on that when you now view your colour images within a micro-second of pressing the shutter release !
We also produced Sepia images by bleaching the black and white print in potassium cyanide, then placing it in potassium bromide, which restored the image in Sepia. One of my jobs was to make the potassium cyanide bath from crystals – without rubber gloves – although I was cautioned not to suck my fingers for awhile. Bet you can’t even buy the stuff these days, and Health and Safety would go mad.
No wonder I have trouble with digital !
I still have a Sanderson brass and mahogany ½ plate camera with a Thornton-Pickard shutter tucked away somewhere, and a 5×4 Speed Graphic, and a 9×12 Linhof Technica with a 120 roll film back, also one of the Super – Ikontas, but I fear that the proximity to salt water and high humidity may well have wreaked some havoc. Be difficult to buy the film, too !
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