Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Personal Interest …..
Although I’ve tried to keep my posts strictly focused on my father’s photography, I’m going to occasionally start putting up some of my personal work. I’ve always considered myself a generalist. I feel I can do it all from photographing your dog to your family to your home to your business. In the fifty years plus that I have been in the photography business I’ve literally done it all. So if you have a question, please don’t hesitate to ask. Or if you have a comment about something that you have seen here, please post it! Thanks for looking …
Thanks for taking the time to look. Hard to believe I haven’t done anything with this site in so long but hopefully that is going to change. Happy belated Earth Day! And pick up your trash and throw it away. Don’t leave it for the next generation!
I’m BACK!!!
Greetings from Paradise!!! No, no not from Hawaii but the Panhandle of Northwest Florida! As the former Major of Pensacola used to say “ Welcome to Pensacola! The Western gate to the Sunshine State. Where thousands live and millions wish they could…” . There are a few more lines but couldn’t remember them and couldn’t find his saying when I tried to Google it. Sorry I haven’t posted any new material but that is going to change. One reason is that I use Instagram and you can find me @frankphardy .
I have a Facebook account but haven’t posted to it in years. I do check it periodically. So if anyone has sent me something and hadn’t responded is because I never saw it. Nothing personal, just don’t care for the way it is setup. I use Instagram because it is primarily set up for photography and other visual mediums.
Next is I am posting this from my iPhone. Post all my Instagram images from my phone and I don’t like typing on a phone. But figured I could try a few and see what happens. Hope to hear from you. I enjoy all the comments and questions. With that said, it’s good to be back….
Thanks again. One reason for coming back is that I am starting to sell my work more aggressively than I have in the past. People are purchasing and inquiring about my photography now more than ever. If interested in anything please inquire and I would be happen to explain them. Thanks again and hope everyone has a great weekend
New York City Harbor …
This is the New York harbor and I am not sure the direction or where this photo was taken. I want to say that the island in the top right of the frame is Ellis Island, but that is entirely a guess. The tip of land to the right of the island is where the Statue of Liberty is located and I am sure of that. The sign in the foreground reads ” Great White Fleet ” and ” United Fruit ” . United Fruit Company has had an interesting history, which would take too long to go into here. Two of it’s products were Chiquita Bananas and Dole Pineapples. Here is a link to United Fruit.
The Great White Fleet was the name of the shipping company that United Fruit owned and operated to transport their products around the world. The link above will also give you some information on the fleet and it too has had a very interesting history. If you like international intrigue, corruption, and the take-over and control of small Latin American countries by the United States and it’s corporations, you are at the right place. These buildings in the foreground are the warehouses of United Fruit in New York / New Jersey. If anyone recognizes any of the areas in the photos, please feel free to comment. Thanks again for looking …
Glass Plate Negatives …
The images that I am going to post today are from glass plate negatives that I purchased off of the Internet a while back. The first one is of a baseball team somewhere from the early 1900’s. No information about the date, team or the players … just an interesting image to me. I plan on cleaning it up and trying to colorize it at some point, but more on that later.
The team is a little short of players, but who cares? They were playing for the love of the game. Now when you watch a baseball game and you see all of the equipment that it takes to field a team, you wonder how these guys got by. I am sure that they would be stunned to see all of the helmets, shin guards, gloves, etc, etc to see what it takes to get a game going. And I am not even going to say anything about what these players are making in salaries today … you know that would probably shock them even more! Next is a couple of kids painting a brick wall …
Here is the whole glass negative scan. How about those outfits that they are wearing to paint in? I have no clue of the year here either, but I would have to say late 1890’s or early 1900’s. More on these later when I have some time to work them up. Thanks for checking back …
Pensacola Fire Department …
This is in the square at Palafox and Government Streets sometime back in the 1920’s. That is the Escambia County Courthouse in the background. Look at the facial expressions on the fire fighters … also look at all of the activity in the background. Everyone is busy and going someplace. Even though this is a black and white image ( toned actually ) it seems that black or some dark color is the predominant color for suits, dresses and cars back in the 1920’s. As usual I have no clue who any of the fire fighters are or what they are doing, but it doesn’t matter. Here is one more from a different direction …
Here you see the TT Wentworth Museum in the background, that at one time used to be the Pensacola City Hall. Even I can remember going down to the City Hall back in the late 1960’s and up into the 1970’s and doing business there. So it must have been in use up until the new City Hall down on Main Street was built back in the 1980’s. I have some photos that I took when they were building the new City Hall over on my other blog that I have showing my photography. If anyone knows anything about either of these two photographs, please feel free to comment. Thanks again for looking and please check back … Frank
Cotton Pickers ….
This was taken back in the 1920’s by an unknown photographer. I wish that I knew something about the guys in the photo or the photographer who made the image, but as usual, I know only what I see. It looks as if it could have been in just another cotton field somewhere on Hwy 87 in north Santa Rosa County. Maybe they are brothers, maybe two strangers who just met on their first day in the field, whatever the the case may be, they have a long, hot, hard day a head of them. Notice that their bags trail another few feet once it touches the ground. They look pretty fresh at this point, so I imagine that their day has just begun. I read somewhere that pickers were only paid a dime for a full bag and on a good day they were lucky to fill two of these bags. Twenty cents for eight to ten hours in the hot sun and one hundred degree heat. That sounds , well, you know how that sounds … I wonder how many lined up to work on this day? We see two men that did. The cotton crop in this field looks thin. Must not have had much rain this growing season. My father used to tell me stories of him and his brother Ben going to visit their Aunt and Uncle in Pineapple Alabama. My father was young, maybe eleven or twelve, and he would go out in the fields and pick cotton with all of the workers. He loved it. Ben hated it. Ben could not wait to get back to Pensacola. I have horn that was given to him by his Uncle who would use the horn to call in the workers at the end of the day. I am sorry to say that I did not take very good care of horn, but I will photograph it and post a photo later. Usually at this point in my post I would say something like … If you want to share your experiences picking cotton, we would love to hear them. But, for some reason, I do not think that I would have many comments. Thanks for looking, and if you like, you can share experiences picking peas, string beans, radishes, etc, etc. Or you could tell us about your backyard garden. Again, thanks for looking … Frank
Unknown Negatives …
A while back on a post, I mentioned that if anyone had any negatives that they did not want to let me know. I talked to several people and the negatives they had, had that either been passed down from family members or they had acquired some other way … flea market find, garage sale find, etc, etc. Most all were just family snapshots, backyard picnics and vacation candid photos. Not exactly what I was looking for, so I did what any other red-blooded American would do … I went on Ebay and bought some. To me, almost all of the negatives that are posted for sale, fit into that category of family snapshots, backyard picnics and vacation travels. Knowing that I should have been more specific, I was not exactly sure of what it was that I was looking for until I ran across the negatives that I am putting up in this post … images showing everyday randomness from the 1930’s to the sixties. Now, the images do not have to show only America, but anywhere in the world … Europe, Asia, China, Africa. So, I purchased these negatives, scanned them and worked them up in Photoshop. They were in fairly good shape, requiring not much computer time to remove scratches, marks, stains, etc. And as usual, I know nothing at all about them other than the obvious – taken in the 1930’s or 40’s and somewhere in Europe. The location could be Germany or some place that speaks German judging by the words / lettering in the photos. There were three negative and I have worked up two. So here they are …
The first image is an overall view of the market and since the people look clean and well fed, I would say that it is pre-WWII. The second showing a meat market / stall looks as if there might be some type of rationing going on since there is not a wide variety of meat or sausages for sale. If anyone recognizes where this area is, please feel free to comment and share what you know with us. I have one more negative from this purchase that I will post once I get it cleaned up and ready. The last photo is really the reason that I purchased these three negatives and besides the fact that they were less than ten dollars. One problem that you find is that everyone thinks that what they have is more valuable than what it actually is … just because it is old, does not mean it is gold ( that is my own phrase ). There are some negatives on Ebay now where the sellers want tens of thousands of dollars for their negatives!
So, if anyone come across any negatives that fit the criteria that I mentioned earlier, before you throw them away, think of me. And, if anyone recognizes anything in these two images which would help me locate the place or the time frame of them, please let me hear from you. Thanks again for looking and I hope everyone had a safe new year … Frank
Bret Harte’s Cabin …
My father made this photo on one of his trips out west to visit his sister in the 1940’s and 50’s. I Googled “Bret Harte” a while back and I think I remember it saying that he was a writer out in California. Here is a link to his Wikipedia site and I was correct about him being a writer. I have seen this old photo for fifty years and never really thought much about it, but I scanned the print and decided to post it just because I had it ready. The only significance to me is that this is my 400th post on this blog. I would guess that I have over 600 photos posted and it could be more since many posts have more than two images and a few have over ten. When I started I had only planned to put up one image per post, then I started finding more and more images that were related. In an effort to streamline my posts, I just thought that it would be easier to include all of the images that were related. My only real goal out of this blog was to just share all of these images that I came across as I sorted through the thousands that I had of my father’s. At some point in time in the future, I am going to try and put together a book of a lot of these image and see what type of response I get. But that is for another time … Thanks for looking and if anyone has been to see Bret Harte’s cabin, let us hear from you. For all I know it might have fallen down or it might have gotten burned up in all of the fires that they are having all over the state of California. And if anyone has read any of Mr. Harte’s books, let us know what you think. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Bronson Field …
These are some negatives that I purchased on Ebay of local air base Bronson Field. I am not exactly sure where Bronson Field was located, but I want to say it was located somewhere near Perdido Bay. I might be completely wrong there and the people that I purchased them from were not exactly sure either. I cropped this negative to show just the flight line and the plane that is taking off below …
There is one other negative that I received and it shows the control tower along with the planes …
And like the one above, I cropped out everything and just showed the flight line …
The photos are nothing really special and you can tell that they were taken by an amateur, but the old cars and planes are interesting. If anyone runs across anymore images like these on Ebay or anywhere else, please let me know. I used to look on Ebay, but you can end up wasting a lot of time with just the shear volume that is on the site. Most of it, to me, is a lot of junk / mess that people think are really valuable and exciting and I am not good at filtering it out. Also, if you run across something at a flea market locally let me know. Thanks again and if anyone knows something about Bronson Field, let us know … Frank
Ice Machine …
I ran across this image years ago and did not pay attention to it until just the other day. I had not noticed the ” 25 cents bag ” written on the door of the unit. This had to have been taken back in the 1950’s and I do not where the machine was located. You can tell that someone must have backed into it and they are filling an insurance claim on the unit for my father to have taken a photo of the ice machine. It looks like it was located in front of a liquor store because those look like pints and half pints on the shelves on the right side of the frame. I have been busy with other things the last several months ( one being Instagram – frankphardy ) and I have not posted much the last several months, but I am going to renew it for another year in a few weeks. If anyone has any questions or comments, please let me hear them. Thanks again for looking … Frank
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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