The Camera in Summertime - The Amateur Photographer's Weekly, 1912
The following article was originally published in August of 1912 in The Amateur Photographer's Weekly. I don't much care for the sexist portrayal of female photographers by the Editors, however I can imagine this would have been commonplace at the time. What's interesting to me about this short article isn't just the fact that it's over a hundred years old, but that many of the problems people face today in 2019 with photography seemed to be more or less the same at the time this was written in 1912.
The Camera in Summer-time
IT is an undoubted
fact that the camera is constantly gaining in
popularity with the summer vacationist.
The writer can remember when a few
years ago the man who carried a camera
around with him was a personage of note,
being in possession of a novelty and greatly
in demand, continually being begged to
photograph this group or that. The other day,
however, the writer went out for a walk
with some party people of all ages and
natures, and when the end of the tramp was
reached, all of us were grouped on a big rock to
"have our pictures taken," and the entire group
had to hold their poses while one poor man
made photographs on some seventeen
different cameras belonging to various members of
the gathering. There were cameras of all
makes and sizes, ranging from a 2A Brownie to
a 5x7 Reflex. One can draw quite a
moral from this when one thinks of the many
pleasant memories that will be engendered in
the future by those seventeen films and
plates.
It is funny, too, when you see the things people will do at
times when they grow careless or forgetful
with their cameras or appurtenances. One
young lady whose photographic experience
had not been very great, unintentionally
committed a rather expensive error some days ago.
Our party were out in some five or six
canoes on the Deleware river, where, by the
way, some exceptionally beautiful views may
be obtained. The young lady in question was
minding the camera of her escort, while he
was laboring with the paddle. Also she had
in her lap a brand new film for which her
companion had just expended about 75
cents. She was looking at the film, holding it
this way and that all of a sudden we in
the other boats heard a wail of distress,
"Oh! I dropped it. Will it hurt?" By
that time the film was reposing some twenty
feet below on the bottom of the river. She
will not hear the last of that for many a day.
Another girl of our acquaintance had been amusing herself
taking a number of pictures with a box camera.
When the film was exhausted she asked one
of the men to remove it and insert a new one.
Being gifted with an accommodating
disposition, he complied with her request, but on
opening the camera he thought he heard
something rattle in its interior economy, and
investigated further, where several folded
memorandum sheets, some coins, and a few
other miscellaneous articles were found;
the girl had evidently been using it as a
chatelaine.
Just the same when one stops to consider the number of people
who make photographs in the summer time,
many of whom have never even had a
camera in their hands before, the average of good
results obtained is most surprising, and a
tribute to present-day photographic
manufacturers.

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