More from the work of Dana Carpenter

Here by popular demand are a few more photos, carrying on from the previous blog. These were also taken early last century by Dana Carpenter: amateur photographer, botanist and the local drug store owner in Middleton Springs, Vermont. My box of glass negatives has now been donated to the Middleton Springs, Vermont, Historical Society where the rest of this wonderful man's archives are housed. In the previous blog I said that I had about 40 negatives in storage in the USA. I'd forgotten that the number is closer to 120. All the more reason to send them to their rightful home. I'm hoping that I'll find eventually find out more about the subjects of these photos from the archivists of Middleton Springs.

Of the images below (again I've spared you the charred corpse although it was tempting...), there was a note with the negative of the old woman in the chair saying that she was 100 years old. In the previous blog there's a photo of two men in an early automobile. I've since learned that one of them was being given a ride in a 1907 Pope-Hartford for his 100th birthday. Was it something in the water at Middleton Springs? Or maybe "Carpenter's Grip" helped them though the long, cold winters.

Note the ski  poles.

As an unabashed cat lover, I do like the pharmacist's cat.

Dana Carpenter, photographer extraordinaire

I've always loved old photographs so I couldn't resist buying forty 4 by 5 inch glass negatives from an antique store in Vermont many years ago. Judging from some with dates they were taken around 1900 and were of country people in rural settings. The photographer was not identified. When I got them home and made some contact prints in my make-shift darkroom (the negatives were too big more my enlarger) I realised what wonderful photographs they were. Had I stumbled across the lost years of Edward Steichen or Alfred Stieglitz?

When I moved to Australia I brought the contact prints with me but left the heavy negatives in storage in the USA. Recently I scanned the prints and used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.6 to get rid of dust spots and to see if I could get the best out of the images.

But who had taken these photos?

There was a clue. One of the photos mentioned "Carpenter's Grip". My son, Eliot, got onto the internet and just happened to find an antique bottle of this cold and flu remedy for sale. It seems the maker of this elixir had been a druggist  for many years in Middletown Springs, Vermont. Searches for his name led to an article in an old newspaper and information about the town from the website of the Middletown Springs Historical Society. One bit of information clinched it for me: Dana Carpenter had been an amateur photographer. I'm now convinced that the photos are his.

The clue to the name of the photographer.

Carpenter was a man of many interests and talents. He owned and ran the drug store, where he sold Carpenter's Grip but---typical of American drug stores---his store was more than a dispensary of medicine. It was the local ice cream emporium and, when the technology arrived in town, it held the local telephone switchboard. Carpenter was also the linesman, using trees and the occasional pole to string the wires to surrounding farms. As well as being a photographer he had a keen interest in botany and corresponded with other amateur scientists around the world. Perhaps his singing was his great failing.  He sang in the local Congregational Church choir where it was said that he couldn't "carry a true melody or produce a tone that did not sound like a she-bear in distress."

Below are some more of Dana Carpenter's photos (I've spared you the one of the charred corpse.):

Girl picking daisies or black-eyed susans.

Retirement before the age of television.

A very trusting Red Squirrel.

Night soil men or maple sugar collectors?

Feeding a lamb with a baby bottle.

The first car to come to town?

In the 110 years since these photos were taken rural Vermont has changed. Cars have replaced horses, the dairy industry is nearly dead, the streets are paved, bulky skirts and baggy woollen pants have given way to jeans, and hard physical labour has been replaced by computer drudgery. And now of course the world is in 256-bit colour. It's interesting to speculate on what life may have been like back then. Were the people like us? Were these happier times? Vermonters of that era were well fed and had a good life-span. We have better medicines now but, as for a cure for the common cold, "Carpenter's Grip" may have been just as good as anything we have now. We can never really know.

In any event, all thanks to Dana Carpenter, drug-store-proprietor, bottler of "Carpenter's Grip", ice-cream maker, telephone manager, amateur botanist, and---not least---photographer extraordinaire for giving us a glimpse into a vanished world.

Museum of Fire

These days we're all bombarded with photographs from the internet many of which seem too good to be true. Many of them aren't true. But I can vouch for this one taken on the M4 in the Western Suburbs of Sydney last Friday. No, the Museum of Fire---actually a museum of fire fighting---wasn't burning down but a warehouse nearby was. Fortunately, there were no deaths or injuries.

My good friend and fellow author, Richard Tulloch, and I were driving back to Sydney from a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains when we saw smoke from the fire and then the seemingly-appropriate sign. Sadly our serious cameras were in the boot of the car and there was nowhere to pull over to get to them but I managed to get out my pocket camera (I was driving) and handed it to Richard who snapped this photo. The moral is: always have a camera with you,  especially if you're feeding a hungry blog.

Accidental Animals

I could never be a nature photographer. I'm just not patient enough to wait in a hide at night for a mother Eurasian Eagle Owl to return to the nest with a freshly-killed mouse, or to crawl around a malarial swamp photographing the mating habits of a False Gharial, or to spend my life searching for last living Night Parrot or Tasmanian Tiger. But I do walk a bit both here in Australia or wherever I might be and I often have Canny the 3rd, my trusty pocket camera, with me. While I could never work for David Attenborough I've had my share of the gadget-bag essential---good luck.

I was with some birdwatcher friends in their backyard in Massachusetts and, while their binoculars were trained on their bird-feeder, I looked down on the ground and saw this baby Striped Skunk. It let me get very close before raising its tail and running away. Fortunately it was too young to spray me. It was incredibly cute, as I hope you'll agree, but not old enough to make scents.

These Rainbow Lorikeets were in a park near where I live in Sydney. They let me get very close before flying away. They are very common but so strikingly colourful that I can never resist photographing them when they give me a chance.

This New Zealand Fur Seal was warming up on the rocks at Kaikoura on the South Island of New Zealand. Its mother, behind me, wasn't as happy about my informal photo-shoot. She made a quick movement towards my legs and I legged it very quickly out of bite-range.

While I was walking on a country road in Maine some young relatives of mine called me over to their backyard. They showed me these baby North American Raccoons in a hollowed out apple tree. Once again, I had a camera in hand---rather, in pocket.

Royal Spoonbills are not uncommon here in eastern Australia. This one was in a park near me rummaging through the water plants in a pond and allowed me to get close to it before it flew over to the other side of the pond. It was clearly annoyed that I'd interrupted its dinner.

I can't claim this photo as my own. Near Boothbay Harbor, Maine, this whale suddenly surfaced. I was at the helm of the boat and quickly cut the engine. I couldn't get to my camera in time but my cousin, Johnny, obligingly took this photo. We thought it was a Minke Whale but this is all we saw of it. It dived and we didn't see it again.

On another boat, this time on a trip up the Ord River near Kununurra, in northmost Western Australia, this lizard was sunning itself. I don't know what kind it was but it was big, fast and loved the water. If you know what it is, please leave a comment.

I was walking around Iron Cove on Sydney Harbour when I spotted this Australian Spotted Jellyfish. They're common here but I'd never seen one before. Jellyfish don't race away when you try to photograph them which is fortunate as it took a while to get a photo that didn't show the clouds above better than the jellyfish itself.

Closer to home, this sausage-size caterpillar (species unknown) appeared in our tiny back garden. I watched it for a while carving great chunks out of some of our favourite plants. I'd have loved to see whether it eventually turned into a butterfly or a moth but by then we wouldn't have any garden left. So I took it for a walk to the park where it would have more to eat. I can't identify it so if anyone can, please leave a comment.

Huntsman Spiders make guest appearances in our houses here in Sydney. They don't actually come in to the house but just magically appear inside on a wall or ceiling. Their bite isn't deadly but they can bite and they are memorable to look at. This one is the span of a child's hand. Okay, a smallish child's hand. They have two speeds: deathly still and frighteningly fast. 

I'm the designated spider-catcher-in-chief because I'm not quite as terrified of huge spiders as my wife is. I use the bowl and magazine method and then release them in the park across the street closer to the neighbours' houses. Huntsmen (Huntsmans?) aren't always easy to catch. Just when I'm about to clap the bowl over them they often shoot off. Perhaps the screams of, "Catch it, Duncan! Catch it! Get it out of here! Oh, yuck! Horrible. Horrible." disturbs them.

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