I had a eureka moment this afternoon, and have finally come up with the last major plot element for my first Edwardian set story (I think my little sojourn back to my eighties adolesence helped quite a bit). The story's had a bit of a prolonged gestation (see other blog posts), but after mucking up 'Midnight Angels' I really wanted to get everything square from beginning to end before starting writing.
I read a lot of historical fiction and I think the best doesn't just scatter period references about, but uses them to generate plot and character - which I'm going to have a goat, though maybe not successfully. There are a couple of deliberate photographic anachronisms, for example, the main character's camera is essentially a simple form of Rolleiflex, about twenty years ahead of when the Rollie was produced, but technically it could have been built in 1908 in the form I propose; as it's part of the reason why he's so successful he didn't want to reveal the secret, so we didn't get Rolleiflexes until the Twenties - that's verisimilitude taken care of, and I'm sticking to it :)
I suppose the hardest thing to believe is that there were paparazzi in the period, but it's absolutely true - and they were even more rapacious and unscrupled than today's snappers.
Comments
Nothing changes
only the technology.
Angharad
Angharad
The names have been changed...
...to protect the incompetent. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Film
Glad you're getting it sorted. Just a thought - was roll film available that early? Certainly plate cameras were in regular use at that time. I'm almost sure, without doing any research, that 35mm film wasn't around and hence no miniature Leicas.
Part of family business was photographic supplies and developing and printing. One customer came in for the pictures taken with his box Brownie. They were all identical shots of a slightly out of focus nose - he'd been looking into the wrong end of the viewfinder so the lens was pointing upwards :) A lot easier with digital cameras these days.
Geoff
Eastman produced roll film by the late 1880s
George Eastman founded Kodak and Edison got roll film from him for his eatly 1890's motion picture experiments.
This was big format film something like 5X7 inches per frame but it could be cut smaller, or say your photographer got his hands on motion picture film. 35mm hit the big time for still use in the 1930s, particarly after rtesonably fast color film came out.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Roll film
Like later TLRs it'll use No.2 roll film, introduced in 1901 (the first story will be set around 1906 / 8), and still going strong. I really have to resist filling pages with photographica (I took out a 600 word description of a darkroom in 'Roni Gwyn'), though the Fifties is my real area of interest. I have a website devoted to my photographica collections at www.chromeagecamera.com .
Verisimilitude
I worked for the 'Big Yellow Box Company' for twenty-odd years, and had several dealings with the Museum Curator before the collection (and its Curator) were shipped off to Bradford**. There's even a contribution from me in the gallery there (or, at least, it was there was last time I looked).
I was looking for a way to raise this issue after I read the teaser, but wanted to keep it off the page, being an implied (and, I now know, unjustified) criticism. I did wonder if I needed at all to worry - and I didn't.
Your stories have a wonderful sense of time and place - I'm looking forward to this one.
Xi
**At the time it was "The National Museum of Photography Film & Television". TV has more-or-less wiped out the other subjects these days. (Wrong sort of TV for this community, regretably...)
Bradford
I ended up in St Luke's Bradford after seriously modifying my face mountain biking in the Yorkshire Dales. When I went for my check-up, and to get the stitches removed from the plastic surgery, we visited the Photography museum and it really is well worth a visit. There was still a strong photographic element in 1992 not sure about now.
Interestingly there was programme on TV when I was on the ward about dodgy breast implants. One of the plastic surgeons involved in the discussions was the senior consultant of the unit at Bradford. I don't think he was the one who patched me up but he taught the guy who did it very well as I have minimal scarring after several hours in the operating theatre. Good old NHS :)
Geoff