Portraits of Immigrants Arriving in the United States in the Early 1900s

Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, with millions of immigrants arrived in the United States via the island by boat.

Amateur photographer Augustus Sherman was the Ellis Island Chief Registry Clerk for a number of years in the early 1900s, and he used his special access to shoot portraits of many of the immigrants who passed through the station.

The New York Public Library recently published a collection of photographs captured by Sherman between 1902 and 1914. They document both what the immigration station was like at the time as well as special cultural outfits of the new immigrants arriving on US shores.

“It is likely that Sherman’s elaborately costumed subjects were detainees, new immigrants held at Ellis Island for one reason or another,” the NYPL writes. “While waiting for what they needed to leave the island (an escort, or money, or travel tickets), some of these immigrants may have been persuaded to pose for Sherman’s camera, donning their best holiday finery or national dress, which they had brought with them from home.”

You can find the entire collection of 89 photos in this Flickr set.

(via New York Public Library via Flickr Blog)

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Tip: Use Heated Hand Warmers to Keep Your Lenses from Fogging Up

When shooting in colder environments, one of the things that can plague your photography is condensation forming on your gear. Photographer Mark Peter Thorpe has a cheap and simple hack for avoiding this problem: heated hand warming packs.

Thorpe originally found himself fighting against condensation after getting into nighttime time-lapse photography.

“This is something we don’t see until about an hour into the shoot which has been going handsomely,” he writes. “We then start to see a black fuzzy area appearing in the center of the resulting image. […] Once it starts there’s no immediate remedy, the glass will have to be heated but that takes some time to ward off the immediate presence of mist.”

Not wanting to shell out serious money for dedicated heating solutions and portable batteries, Thorpe decided try heated hand packs — the one-time-use kind that people carry with them during outdoor activities. They worked great.

Now, whenever Thorpe needs to take his camera into the great outdoors for a nighttime or cold weather shoot, he first stresses his lens in the heat packs at least an hour before he starts shooting. This keeps the lens nice and warm throughout the shoot to eliminate the potential of condensation building up.

First he fixes the lens settings using some duct tape:

Thorpe then attaches self-adhesive heat packs on the lower sides of the lens, since heat rises.

Finally, he wraps the heated lens with a cover to retain the heat as much as possible. Voila! The lens is dressed and ready to go out:

Some of the better heat pads out there can last an entire day, so they’re more than enough for a night of extensive shooting. Other cheaper ones are great for shorter shoots.

The hack is also extremely economical — Thorpe has found 9-packs of smaller heat pads for about $1, and larger ones were just about 25 cents each.

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Image credits: Photographs by Mark Peter Thorpe and used with permission

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Shutter Sounds: Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony Cameras Compared

How do the shutter sounds of popular camera brands compare with one another? Which cameras are loud, and which are quiet? Photographer Davin Lavikka recently published the 49-second video above to shed some light (or sound?) on these questions. It’s a comparison of the shutter sounds of the Pentax 645Z, Canon 5Ds, Nikon D810, Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, and Sony a6000.

The video highlights the Olympus E-M5 II‘s silent shutter mode, which can shoot 1/16000 photos with an electronic shutter that’s virtually inaudible — great for situations in which loud shutter sounds would be intrusive and inappropriate.

(via Lavikka Photography via ISO 1200)

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10 Different Ways You Can Use a Single Softbox

When you’re just starting out in photography, you may not have a lot of money to invest in putting together a high-end arsenal of studio lighting equipment. By being resourceful, however, you can do a lot with a little.

In the 23-minute video by the lighting brand Sekonic, photographer Tony Corbell demonstrates how you can create 10 completely different lighting scenarios in the studio for products and portraits with a single large softbox.

The main tools Corbell uses are the $180 Bowens Lumiair 80-100 Softbox and the $912 Bowens Gemini 500Pro monolight.

Here’s a little table of contents for the different styles discussed, along with some example images and lighting diagrams that are shown. Jump to each time in the video to learn about each setup:

#1: Jewelry Photography (0m28s)

#2: Edge/Rim Light for Creating Depth (2m52s)

#3: Contemporary Beauty Look (4m12s)

#4: Movie Poster Face Lighting (7m06s)

#5: Main Light as a Background (8m28s)

#6: Light Subject and Background Together (10m26s)

#7: Designing a Window with Your Softbox (12m37s)

#8: Bouncing the Softbox (14m49s)

#9: Using Your Softbox as a Design Element (16m35s)

#10: Evenly Lighting a Group of People (18m34s)

(via Sekonic via Reddit)

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