Fort Stephenson was a sleepy supply depot fort built under the orders of General William Henry Harrison after he gained command of the Army of the Northwest in 1813. Fort Stephenson’s task was to guard the Sandusky River. The fort consisted of a palisade wall with three blockhouses. By the summer of 1813 was under the command of the young Major George Croghan, and a garrison of 160 regulars from the 17th and 24th US Infantry, along with the local militia. The Original memorial plaque to the Battle of Fort Stephenson After the failure of the second British assault in early July of 1813 againstRead More →

Back in April, at the FPP Walking Workshop I had the chance to work with some studio lights. One of the things to come out of the first round with the studio light was the Polaroid Portraits that I was very proud of. But on Sunday, before the Large Format workshop kicked off, I again hooked up one of my cameras to the same light and, with the help of Professor Jeff, got all the settings landed and began to pull people in attendance into my studio for a quick shot. Loaded into my camera was a single roll of Kodak Portra 160NC (one ofRead More →

This past weekend at the Film Photography Project’s Walking Workshop in lovely downtown Findlay, Ohio, at the Polaroid Party at the University, they had a couple of stations set up for portrait work. I had used by trusty Auto 250 (Polaroid Model 250 Automatic Land Camera) at Milton’s Help-Portrait event a couple of years back now, which was a hit, but I never thought to hook it up to a studio light. The camera is equipped with a PC socket which allows you to hook up an electronic flash mounted on a bracket, or a radio trigger. Mat’s massive Sinar P2 8×10 camera took theRead More →

This is what it’s all been leading up to. A print, there’s something unique about holding a print in your hand, looking down at the patterns of light and shadow being brought out in blacks, whites, and grays, it’s magic. Well actually its science, the perfect blend of art and science. Creating the print is a rather neat process from start to end and when you sit down and think about the sheer amount of control you have over the whole process is fantastic. You get to pick the camera (and in some cases the lens), film stock. Then you can meter it the wayRead More →

When it rains, the last place you’ll want to be is Fort Meigs, trust me on this one. The fort isn’t the nicest fort that got involved in the war, there is not a long drawn out or particularly memorable history about the depot fortification. It really is more of an afterthought, a post designed to be a stopping point for troops and supplies, and while it saw only two sieges over the course of the war it did stand out in one way. It was the largest wooden palisade wall fort in all of North America, at least when it was first built. UnlikeRead More →

The Siege of Fort Meigs was a mess, a minor action at a depot fort that did little but injury the personal morale of a British officer and drive a wedge in the strained alliance between Tecumseh and the British. It was the opening move in the long game of William Henry Harrison and his designs for the invasion of Upper Canada. A muddy mess that did little to further the British plans but was exactly what Harrison had hoped in the end. A small, tactical victory. One of seven blockhouses that served as defensive strong points and secure artillery batteries for the palasade wallRead More →

Negotiations to bring a higher-education campus to the small town of Germantown began in 1885, initially to be a satellite campus of the Cincinnati Wesleyan College. However, that did not end up being the case, and the town council found themselves in the office of Orvon Graff Brown, who at the time was the president of the Ohio Conservatory of Music and the School of Oratory. Brown agreed to build a branch of his College in Germantown. But by 1886, Brown was set on establishing a whole new college in the town, and by 1888 the Twin Valley College was established by charter and byRead More →

Now, fellow Canadians, British, and general folks, please don’t harp on me for mis-spelling ‘colour’ in the title because it’s the proper brand name for the latest batch of film out of the fantastic folks at the Impossible Project. ColorProtection is the latest emulsion in their quest to reinvent instant integral film. Well, I’m going to say they have reinvented it; now it’s a matter of improving what they have. But what they have right now is pretty damned good. So what makes this film the best yet out of the factory? Easy, anyone who has used this film from the beginning can attest thatRead More →