Photography Studios Research Articles

IMPROVING FILM QUALITY USING SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS IN PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIOS

The purpose of this case study was to explore how software solutions can be utilised to improve film quality in photography studios. It focused on the issues faced by a photography studio located in Kangar, Perlis, such as dirty images and damaged films. A survey was administered to 51 working photographers to elicit important insights regarding user preferences and experiences, allowing for a more in-depth grasp of their needs and expectations. The findings revealed that software solutions can be utilised to enhance various aspects of film production, including image clarity, colour accuracy, noise reduction, and overall aesthetic appeal. It also addressed the issue of software flaws and application malfunctions, emphasising the need to use dependable software to avoid disruptions and improve photo editing quality. Photography studios are recommended to combine both high-quality equipment and software programs to optimise business operations, improve overall film quality, and ultimately increase client satisfaction.

Technological Unemployment galore in Ghana: The spotlight on the Digital Photography Industry

In recent times it is perceived technology is contributing to high levels of unemployment among graduate workers in the photography industry in Ghana. The study aimed to explore the impact of technology on employment opportunities in the industry and assess the consequences of this for Ghana. A comprehensive review of existing literature was conducted to inform the research design, which involved both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather quality data from participants. The study involved interviews and questionnaires with a total of 23 participants, including directors of photography studios, graduate workers, and unemployed graduates seeking employment. The findings suggest that the rise of modern technology is leading to the displacement of digital photography skilled workers, with photography directors being hesitant to expand their businesses and hire more workers due to the challenging economic climate. Participants also reported facing financial constraints when trying to start their photography businesses. Based on these findings, the study provides suggestings for assuaging the impact of technological unemployment in digital photography industry in Ghana.

Victorian Facebooks: Privacy Concerns at William Notman’s Studio

The history of issues of privacy in relation to photography is generally dated to the introduction of handheld cameras and halftone printing at the end of the nineteenth century. Citing a remarkable series of notations in the records of famed Montreal photographer William Notman, this article argues that privacy concerns were at issue in the everyday operations of the photography studios that preceded amateur photography. These notations represent the rudimentary attempts that some of Notman’s clients made to restrict the circulation, sale and availability of their studio portraits starting in the 1870s. This article speculates that the emergent anxieties regarding privacy exemplified by such notations were informed by the setup and marketing practices of early photography studios. Ultimately, this analysis seeks to show that current debates about privacy, photography and visibility can be traced back to the commercial systems that developed in tandem with early photography technologies.

The Development of an Identification Photo Booth System based on a Deep Learning Automatic Image Capturing Method

Abstract With advances in technology, photo booths equipped with automatic capturing systems have gradually replaced the identification (ID) photo service provided by photography studios, thereby enabling consumers to save a considerable amount of time and money. Common automatic capturing systems employ text and voice instructions to guide users in capturing their ID photos; however, the capturing results may not conform to ID photo specifications. To address this issue, this study proposes an ID photo capturing algorithm that can automatically detect facial contours and adjust the size of captured images. The authors adopted a deep learning method (You Only Look Once) to detect the face and applied a semi-automatic annotation technique of facial landmarks to find the lip and chin regions from the facial region. In the experiments, subjects were seated at various distances and heights for testing the performance of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively and accurately capture ID photos that satisfy the required specifications.

The Image of Růžena Maturová in the Iconography Collection of the Bedřich Smetana Museum

The article summarises the results attained so far through research and expert processing of the photographs held in the iconography collections of the Bedřich Smetana Museum. It provides information about Růžena Maturová (1869–1938) including previously unpublished details about the period of her life after the end of her career as an opera singer at the National Theatre in Prague (1910–1938), concerning Maturová’s performing in silent film (1920–1922), her work in healthcare services (1914–1920), and her sociocultural activities in support of retired soloists from the National Theatre in Prague (at the Na Slovanech Cinema, 1920–1938). The subject matter of the study is a photo album titled R. Maturová. In many cases, comparisons of the photographs from this album with other available sources have enabled the recognition of persons not previously identified in portraits, more exact determination of dating and provenience, and the identification of photography studios.

Minor Photography? Women Photographers in Yugoslavia, Pre- and Post-WWII

This paper introduces a range of unknown women photographers who worked in Yugoslavia throughout the 1970s, enabling an understanding of the hierarchy of gender relations and recapitulating the ideas and value systems that were defined by men throughout this period. The female gaze developed gradually in a period when women gained education, and which saw several waves of feminism. In studying the themes of their work, the way they developed their knowledge, and the reasons for their (non-)recognition on the national photographic scene, the three areas in which women most frequently worked are highlighted: private photography studios (ateliers), photography clubs, and print media. Although the power structures in the context considered were captured only “peripherally” by a woman’s camera, in this period we nevertheless come across traces of “disruption” of the production of meaning as a prerogative of social (=male) power, which gradually leads to more significant changes in the field of women’s photography, but only from the 1980s onwards.

Picturing Canada

This project focused on gathering information relevant to photography in British North America from the period of 1839-1889. It utilized the digitized newspapers available on the searchable Paper of Record database, beginning with Halifax, Toronto, St. Thomas, and Vancouver. The recorded information highlighted photographic service advertisements, studio location changes, photographic bookings, and new developments in photographic technology. This research allows for insight into how and for what purposes photography was being used in this time period. Through examining different newspapers across multiple locations, this project was able to track the speed at which news and technological developments were received in different areas. The project additionally tracked and mapped the location of artists and photography studios, in an effort to tie the movement of photographers from one city, town, or province, to one another. Several photographers were discovered to occupy the same photographic studios, passing off their studios to others, while in pursuit of a greater opportunity elsewhere. In executing this research, this project established a basis for on the archived information on early Canadian photography, and specifically, the connections between the movement of photographers.

Urban amenities for creativity: An analysis of location drivers for photography studios in Nanjing, China

Urban amenities have been an increasing concern in recent scholarly discussion for their crucial role in promoting local economic development, especially for the rapid rise of the creative class. However, due to the Anglophone dominance in current discourse on this issue, the urban amenities for creativity in the particular context of China remain under-explored. This paper focuses on the location drivers for a specific sector of creative industries, photography studios, based at city level in Nanjing, China. It is suggested that urban amenities for creativity present great power to explain the spatial concentration of photography studios in the old downtown area of Nanjing. In general, photography entrepreneurship is closely associated with landscape amenities, leisure and networking amenities, and accessibility, whereas it is only slightly related to educational amenities. More specifically, the urban amenities for creativity for photography in Nanjing refer in particular to city gardens, cultural heritage, catering places, subway stations, locations which are relatively different from the attractions for creativity that are highlighted by the studies based in West. We therefore propose a contextualized and categorized approach for the urban policy of creative cities.

Photographic Propaganda under Peronism, 1946–55: Selections from the Archivo General de la Nación Argentina

This article analyses a representative selection of photographs from the Archivo General de la Nación Argentina produced by an army of photographers who assiduously chronicled Eva and Juan Domingo Perón’s public engagements. These images were shrewdly informed by an array of popular forms (tango lyrics, the storylines of photo–romances, movies, and radio serials), and by a set of visual models borrowed from the nineteenth-century photography tradition, commercial photography studios of celebrities, Hollywood fashion codes, Soviet-related paradigms anchored in the legacy of the socialist and anarchist movements of early twentieth-century Argentina, and from royal and religious iconography. Through their careful staging before the camera, Perón and Eva amalgamated these visual traditions with their political content in order to reach and unify the multiple socio-political constituencies of Argentina at the time. The conventional aesthetic – in terms of view angles, lighting, and composition – of such images granted their movement a patina of legitimacy and the sense of an enduring legacy.

Guest Editors' Introduction

The article provides a theoretical overview of the study of the commodification of intimacy in Asia, specifically charting a framework for understanding its institutionalization. It introduces the concept of “intimate industries,” meaning the economic institutions that market the intimacies of affect, care, reproduction, and sex. These industries include surrogacy clinics, bridal photography studios, ecotourism sites, and among others, overseas call centers. The article maps the types of labor that intimate industries create, the types of personal relations they sustain, the moral conflicts and anxieties they engender, and lastly, their constitution of the body and biopolitics. The article draws attention to the reconfiguration of the economic world system through its discussion of the emergence of new nonmanufacturing sectors in Asia and the deepening marketization of longstanding sectors.

Making Grandfather Come Out Better

In contemporary Turkey, a growing number of lower to middle-income families bring old and often damaged photographs of their deceased family members to digital studios for restoration. Digital restoration artists, whether working online or from photography studios, retouch these photographs in often highly creative ways, such as adding color and fantasy backgrounds, or combining discrete portraits into fictional (diachronic) family portraits. Digital technologies such as the Photoshop program are here called upon to perform a very old desire: that of ensuring a dead person’s continued presence. Engaging with debates on the passage from analog to digital and the relationship of photography to death, I examine this process from two perspectives. First, I focus on digital artists who understand their work in professional terms as intensely material, and in social terms as one of ‘saving photographs from death’; second, I examine the renewed social potency that such digitally remastered photographs acquire in Turkish homes, where digital intervention not only ensures the continued potency of ancestral photographs in ensuring the presence of the deceased patriarch, but also enhances this presence in novel ways. Digitally remastered photographs are understood here as more than ‘just’ photo-realistic. They are ‘more perfect’ or even ‘more real’: their fictionality adds to their auratic character as icons of authority and makes them eminently suited for the renewed kind of social work that is demanded of them.

"People Don't Attack You If You Dress Fancy": Consuming Femininity in Contemporary China

April 2001, Nanjing, PRC: On a bright, sunny spring afternoon I am walking on a section of the Ming dynasty wall in Nanjing and look down to see a dozen heterosexual Chinese couples wearing their Westernized wedding finery, all getting ready for their bridal photo shoots. Juxtaposed against the architectural marker of China's classical military defense, the young women's blindingly white cascades of satin and tulle reflect an aura of transglobal style and desire.June 2007, Shanghai, PRC: Out for a morning stroll before the heat of the day, I turn a corner and encounter on the sidewalk a line of qipao-dad young waitresses listening attentively to the manager's directives for good service and good business. Through the city's haze I can make out the glitzy high-rise buildings of the Pudong, a symbol of China's rapidly modernizing desires to connect with the world.Twenty-first- century Chinese cities are spaces not only of architectural hybridity displaying the co-temporality of the dynastic past and the postsocialist future but also locales in which young women perform and negotiate the polyvalent discourses of what it means to be a woman in China. When many students in U.S. college classrooms are asked to offer images of Chinese women, the most frequent (and in some instances pernicious) representations are those of the lotus-footed woman, the state-indoctrinated Maoist revolutionary, the dutiful mother who must adhere to the draconian one- child law, or the young athlete from the dour state-run sports training facilities.1 The U.S. popular press has added to this list by regularly portraying unisex-uniformed factory workers, female laboring drones whose undifferentiated, unadorned, and exploited female bodies seemingly drive the engine of China's economic growth and power. In many women's studies courses these same bodies become the singular markers of Chinese womanhood, distanced from Western conceptions of femininity. Yet two other figures of femininity have emerged directly from the spaces of consumption generated by the growing Chinese economy: one a fashionable femininity encoded by the white wedding gown of Western modernity, and the other a cultural femininity enrobed in a version of the traditional Chinese qipao. Both forms of femininity are seen across the Chinese metropolitan landscape of restaurants, photography studios, and mega-shopping districts. Arising at the intersections of global market capitalism, nationalism, and heteronormativity, these two garments and those who don them represent a dyad pointing to the complex, overlapping, and even contradictory embodiments of femininity in contemporary China.Together the white wedding gown and qipao function to delineate the problematic relationship of desire, beauty, and agency in interpreting Chinese female subjectivity. In contrast to the female factory worker's uniform that inscribes her into a monochromatic construction of an asexualized femininity limited to mechanical reproduction in factory settings, these two pieces of female clothing write into the space of Chinese urbanity a femininity that must account for the coexistence of contrasting temporal moments, competing cultural values, and differing sexualities. The qipao represents a stylization of a hypersexualized and depoliticized cultural past visible primarily through the framework of the modern-day service industry, while the white wedding gown symbolizes the emergent present linked to a romanticized ideology of globalization, female worldliness, and heterosexuality. These garments represent what might best be called prefashioned femininities. Each is a type of uniform that marks its wearer within a pre-established and overdetermined definition of femininity. The qipao is literally in service to the hospitality industry as an uniform reliant on the semiotics of a nostalgic Chinese beauty etched with a heightened sexuality and linked to a commercialized, cosmopolitan past (and future). …

From Sitters to Photographers: Women in Photography from the Qajar Era to the 1930s

Royal patronage enabled photography to enter Iran, but it spread through the country without much difficulty, cost being the main impediment. Women faced a particular obstacle, however, for religious prescriptions prevented their sitting for photographers other than close kin. A newspaper advertisement of 1877 indicates that women were not allowed in photography studios. King Nāser-ed-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–98) ignored such restrictions and photographed his wives. Not only did he himself photograph, but he also trained his servants and harem eunuchs to do so. The elite followed him in embracing the new invention, but they were reluctant to allow their wives to be photographed in public studios. Some set up household darkrooms, and thus women were photographed in a number of these families. This article examines how women were portrayed in photographs during the Qajar era by European male and female photographers and by Iranian female and male photographers; it also examines dossiers relating to the photography of women from the mid-1850s through the 1930s.

Photography in the Grey Years (1920–40)

A new chapter in the history of photography in Iran begins with the rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Not only does the state emerge as a client, but the relative stability of the two decades from 1920 to 1940 paves the way for the average citizen to enter the photography studios. The forced unveiling of women during this period plays a significant role in the promotion of family photographic portraiture. This period is also characterised by the gradual institutionalisation of the practice of photography through various official venues, public use and the establishment of the institutions necessary to promote the technique and education and to solidify its economic base. These years can be characterised as a transition or grey period.

The Black Maria: film studio, film technology (cinema and the history of technology)

The Black Maria: film studio, film technology (cinema and the history of technology)

The Preservation of Terror

The Preservation of Terror Eric Gottesman (bio) After the 1974 arrest of Emperor Haile Selassie by the Marxist opposition-prompted in part by public outrage over photographs in the international media showing the emperor feeding meat to his animals while rural Ethiopians starved-political factions angled for control. Not coincidentally, it was around this time, specifically in 1977, in the midst of the Red Terror, that the Soviet-supported communist government in Ethiopia (known as the Derg) unofficially outlawed photography. These officials were afraid that someone might use images to expose their regime's abuses of power. As a result, during that time, Ethiopians could only have their images made in official "photographing studios" set up by the government to make photographs used as official documents of identity. The Derg collapsed twenty-one years ago, but its psychological legacy continues to mystify identity and politics in Ethiopia and terrify those old enough to remember it. Of course, Ethiopians are now permitted to have cameras; but people continue to visit photography studios and carry around passport photographs of their loved ones. On holidays, families still line up to have their pictures made. I have visited friends and neighbors in Ethiopia, and in the United States, and have asked to see the images they preserved in their homes, in photo albums, in forgotten boxes, on cluttered desks. I asked people to allow me to re-photograph these images and the marks left on them over the turbulent intervening years. Many of these photographs depict people lost during the Red Terror or in its wake. Some are made more recently with this photographic history in mind. The photograph "Mother and Son Reunited . . ." was brought to me by someone who used the darkroom to combine an old image of a boy, missing since 1982, with a new image of his mother who still carries his photograph with her to try to find him. I have also begun to explore the pictures people in the Diaspora have carried with them, as well as the "ones that got away"-photographs that Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees remember but, for some reason, had to leave behind. The verbal descriptions of these inert photographs (gone, but not forgotten) testify to the power of the printed photograph in a time of digitization. As well, they reveal fragments of previously normal lives. These nearly two-dimensional rectangular objects seem fleeting, yet they have endured war, flight, and physical decay, as well as love and banality. I am interested in what these images say about the elision of personal and official histories. What do disintegrating government-sanctioned images say about the legacy of an authoritarian regime? What do old monochromatic images recall of the subjects, of what they endured, or of their memories? And how do these images inform the new, full-color national self-image Ethiopians are busily creating? [End Page 155] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Banded Passport Photographs (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 20" x 24"). [End Page 156] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Every page of Amsale Shiferaw's Photo Album (2007) by Eric Gottesman. Inkjet print (h: 80" x 42"). [End Page 157] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Mobile Orphan Photo Studio (2007) by Eric Gottesman. Gelatin silver prints (h: 30" x 40"). [End Page 158] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Hanna Mesfin's Mother's Photo Album (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 24" x 17") [End Page 159] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Backs of Passport Photographs, Amharic (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 16" x 20"). [End Page 160] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 6. Photograph of Hanna Mesfin's Mother, 1996 (2008) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 9" x 12"). [End Page 161] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. Photograph of Hanna Mesfin's Mother with Woman, 1996 (2008) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 17" x 24"). [End Page 162] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 8. Photograph of General's Engagement Party (2004) by Eric Gottesman. Gelatin silver...

Studio Practices in Early Japanese Photography: The Tomishige Archive

In 1870 Tomishige Rihei opened one of Japan's first photography studios in the town of Kumamoto, Kyushu prefecture. Four generations of the Tomishige family have operated the studio continuously since that time, creating a rare record of Japanese photographic history. The archives of the Tomishige Studio include studio equipment, photographs, and primary documents. Using this unique archive as a case study, this article considers the development of commercial photography within late-nineteenth-century Japan. Examining Tomishige's early business practices and working environment through these physical artifacts provides insight into both Tomishige's business and the broader world of early Japanese photography.

Telo (v podobo) ujeto

In a private collection in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, two photographs from the beginning of the twentieth century have been preserved that are interesting as both sociological evidence and documentation of the history of photography; specifically, that of two photography studios: one in Rijeka, Croatia, and the other in the faraway Egypt. The persons in these photos are “bodies frozen in time,” but at the same time they are “holders of lives.” They offer an insight into their individual lifestyles and, by applying appropriate methods, they unveil history at the “micro” level. This paper discusses the “vocation” of a wet nurse in Alexandria (born in 1877), one of numerous women from the Gorizia region that left their homeland to earn their living in a faraway country out of economic necessity. The focus is on the issue of her body, which, in the case of the earlier photograph taken on the occasion of her wedding, serves as a clothes-hanger for a fashionable dress, whereas the second photograph was taken after she had been forced to offer her body to the “labor market,” receiving wages in return for having weaned her own child and going to Alexandria to suckle the baby of rich parents there. Along with this bitter central theme, the creators of the two photographs are also studied: the older photo was taken in 1895/96 in Rijeka by Ilario Carposio (1852–1921), who received several international awards for his trade, which he also documented on the verso of the photograph. The second photo was taken at the Fettel & Bernard studio in Alexandria. By a strange coincidence, both the Alexandria wet nurse (in 1906/07) and, a decade earlier (in 1896), the Greek poet Constantin P. Cavafy (1863–1933) were photographed in the same studio, posed next to the same studio requisite, which demonstrates that people of both upper and lower classes could meet in these studios.

Telo (v podobo) ujeto

In a private collection in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, two photographs from the beginning of the twentieth century have been preserved that are interesting as both sociological evidence and documentation of the history of photography; specifically, that of two photography studios: one in Rijeka, Croatia, and the other in the faraway Egypt. The persons in these photos are “bodies frozen in time,” but at the same time they are “holders of lives.” They offer an insight into their individual lifestyles and, by applying appropriate methods, they unveil history at the “micro” level. This paper discusses the “vocation” of a wet nurse in Alexandria (born in 1877), one of numerous women from the Gorizia region that left their homeland to earn their living in a faraway country out of economic necessity. The focus is on the issue of her body, which, in the case of the earlier photograph taken on the occasion of her wedding, serves as a clothes-hanger for a fashionable dress, whereas the second photograph was taken after she had been forced to offer her body to the “labor market,” receiving wages in return for having weaned her own child and going to Alexandria to suckle the baby of rich parents there. Along with this bitter central theme, the creators of the two photographs are also studied: the older photo was taken in 1895/96 in Rijeka by Ilario Carposio (1852–1921), who received several international awards for his trade, which he also documented on the verso of the photograph. The second photo was taken at the Fettel & Bernard studio in Alexandria. By a strange coincidence, both the Alexandria wet nurse (in 1906/07) and, a decade earlier (in 1896), the Greek poet Constantin P. Cavafy (1863–1933) were photographed in the same studio, posed next to the same studio requisite, which demonstrates that people of both upper and lower classes could meet in these studios.

DIFFERENT PICTORIAL TECHNIQUES ON PHOTOGRAPHY

The ongms of the evolution of photography lie in the optic chamber or what is known as the artificial eye. The precursor of photography is found in the optical principle of the 'camera obscura' as utilized by Aristotle. Later on, this technique was also employed by the eleventh-century Arab scholar Alhacen, who was a pioneer in the use of the camera obscura to observe eclipses. However, not until the eighteenth century and the advent of the use of the camera obscura as a copying instrument can the first genuine step towards photography be detected. The camera obscura of the eighteenth century consisted of a box with a round hole at the top where the lens was placed and a mirror which reflected the image inside the chamber where, by introducing part of their body, someone was able to produce a copy of the image projected from outside. This camera obscura was first used by such famous figures from the world of art as Canaletto, in order to reproduce reality. The next stage in the development of the art of photography was obtaining a photochemical impression of the image reflected inside the camera obscura. In 1758, a German physician called Johann Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened when exposed to light. Between 1822 and 1826, Nicephore Niepce obtained the first permanent 'photograph' by carrying out innovative tests on a lithographic stone. Niepce came to realize that bitumen was resistant to the effects of light, but the plates required six or eight hours' exposure when prepared in this way. For many years, he collaborated with Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the diorama, who improved upon Niepce's invention. Daguerre managed to fix the image using a shiny silver or copper plate which was treated with iodine, forming a film of silver iodide. This substance proved to be highly sensitive to light, the image being fixed in three or four minutes in the camera obscura. This process, known as the 'Daguerreotype', became world famous in 1839. This development meant that the visible and three-dimensional images that surrounded citizens of the time could now be captured and transformed into two-dimensional pictures within the photographic chamber. Artists became free to distance themselves from realistic representation of the world around them and to begin to interpret the world as they perceived it with greater liberty, this period witnessing the birth of Impressionism which gave rise to a whole new notion of art. It also meant a bitter blow for those artists who had made their living out of portrait painting and were faced with being marginalized, as photography took hold and forced them to compete and cope with the new technology. The year 1911 saw the advent of what was termed 'colour photography', these being tinted and retouched photographs. The final jump to true colour photography would be made in 1935 when a process developed in a chemical laboratory became what we know as colour photography today. Photography has long been a means of keeping old memories alive. Photography has assumed the role of visual historian for our memories, capturing and preserving for posterity the images that time takes away with it. In the period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, photography experienced its boom period and took over, in many instances, from painted portraits. Artists began to usc photographs as a support for their drawings, with a view to achieving a greater degree of realism in their portraits. This new tool made the artist's life easier and meant that portraits became more affordable and accessible for the middle classes. Painters turned into photographers and photographers turned into painters. Artists' studios soon became both art and photography studios. At this juncture, photography developed as the basis for a number of different pictorial techniques employed on photographic supports, aimed at achieving the greatest degree of realism and imitating various different pictorial techniques used up until then by artists, such as oil painting, tempera and water colours, until it arrived at the chemical procedures that lie at the heart of colour photography. Painted photographs include: