Times change things a lot of course.. and maybe in those days he just did not have the complete collection of tools that always seem readily to hand nowadays.. maybe it's the only spanner he had available to him then ???Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.
Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?
An enlarged clip to see it better.....
Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.
I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.
Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?
Don't answer that.
Regards...... Guy
I think, when you're using a plate camera with no viewfinder except a ground glass in the focal plane, that most images were 'set up'. At the very least, your subject had to pose to avoid movement during the exposure.Times change things a lot of course.. and maybe in those days he just did not have the complete collection of tools that always seem readily to hand nowadays.. maybe it's the only spanner he had available to him then ???Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.
Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?
An enlarged clip to see it better.....
Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.
I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.
Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?
Don't answer that.
Regards...... Guy
It IS clearly stated of course that a lot (maybe all ?) of these pictures here were indeed 'set up' by the photographer so just maybe he wanted to simply convey the particular action and not perhaps had reality quite as much in mind ?
The person is obviously posing; it's a portrait. A larger wrench looked better than a smaller wrench, and holding the wrench to a particular nut is merely an after-effect of the desired pose.Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.
Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?
An enlarged clip to see it better.....
Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.
I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.
Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?
Don't answer that.
Regards...... Guy
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
I have no reason to think it's an actor either. It's likely an actual worker posing with an actual tool from his actual workplace.
Yes, looking again, the man is real, but told to pose like that is a bit absurd in my eye, why not something realistic?
The photographer was a gentleman. He probably had no idea how working people went about their jobs.
I suspect there was no such thing as a candid back then, not when setting up each shot was a bit like setting up a studio because of the nature of the camera. Also people would not have been accustomed to being photographed so it would have been a big deal.
Aussie here, so it's a spanner for us.
In The States I've never heard anyone refer to an ordinary open-end wrench as a "spanner." Perhaps they did in 1900?
