Letting off Steam

PRESENT AND PAST

As we head into spring and summer – the heart of the show season – it seems an appropriate time to plant of few reminders for those of you planning on submitting articles or photographs about your shows or the shows you attend.

Mostly, I want to remind folks who are using digital cameras to take photos at the camera’s highest-quality setting. Photos taken on a typical digital camera’s lowest-quality setting generally won’t make the transition to print. The photos can look great on your computer screen at home, but by the time we’re done formatting them, they’re a quarter of their original size. Truth be told, at some levels plain old film is still much better, but it’s hard to argue with a digital camera’s ease of use – not to mention the almost absolute lack of film processing costs associated with digital photography.

And on the subject of photographs, I’d like to repeat a request I’ve made in the past for old photographs and steam-related artwork. We’re actively archiving all the images we have already published, and we’d like to build on that archive with material we can show off in future issues or even in a special issue or two.

What we’re really wanting are original negatives, because working from those we can work up stunning photographs. We’re especially interested in any old glass-plate negatives showing steam traction engines or other agricultural scenes of yesterday. Shipping that type of precious cargo can be a little nerve wracking, but if any readers have material along those lines I’d encourage them to contact me – we’ll help in any way we can.

PAST AND PRESENT