Listing Cameras makes me very hungry...

So I made a new version of Grammie's pizza today, and it turned out mushroom-dilly-licious, if I must say so myself.

Recipe powers, Activate! Form of a...

Mushroom Onion Pizza Pie!

First off, wash those filthy mitts of yours! This is a hands-on process, and we don't want any of your pizza munchers getting mono.

Pizza dough:

Dissolve 1 packet of Fleischman's Rapid-Rise yeast in a cup and a half of warm water (not hot). Once completely dissolved, pour this mixture into your MixMaster, or into a bowl if you plan to knead the dough by hand.

Add a tablespoon and a half of Crisco shortening, and four to four and a half cups of All-Purpose flour. Put mixer on slow speed until ingredients are blended enough so that the flour won't "poof"! Then put the mixer on high for at least five minutes.

It is best for the dough to be too wet at first, and then add enough flour until the consistency is right, as opposed to trying to wet down dough that is too dry.

The end product should be firm, smooth and silky.

When you're happy with the dough, put a teaspoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil into a large glass bowl, then use a paper towel to spread it evenly on the inside of the bowl. Gently place the dough into the bowl, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Find a warm place to hide the dough. I like to put it in the middle of a bed or sofa and layer blankets over it, safely out of the reach of two nosy cats. It will be ready in an hour.

My preference of pizza pans is Pampered Chef Stoneware, but if you keep an eye on it, you can make do with a regular cookie sheet or pizza pan. Then go out and getchoo some Stoneware, because that stuff is worth EVERY PENNY!!

Ok, onward! It works best if you accompany the pizza assembly with singing and dancing! I like to wear a frilly vintage apron and maribou kitten heels, myself. Frilly, I love that word, frilly.

Using your fingers, scoop out about a teaspoon of Crisco shortening and coat one of the pizza pans lightly. Rip an appropriately sized piece of dough off your now-raised giant dough ball and slap it in the middle of one of your pizza pans.

Using your fingers, push the dough a little at a time towards the edges of the pan until the entire pan is covered with dough, with some extra around the outside to form the crust.

Toppings:

Layer 1: About an eighth cup of Extra Virgin Olive oil
Layer 2: 4 Packs of mushrooms that have been chopped into tiny pieces and sauteed in butter until they will spread
Layer 3: Mulched Onions - processed the same as mushrooms above
Layer 4: Very light sprinkle of shredded mozzarella cheese
Layer 5: Medium heavy layer of shaved or shredded, but NOT grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Now to put it all together!

Layer 1: Drizzle some olive oil over the dough you've already spread on the cooking sheet, then use your fingers to spread it lightly and evenly over all the dough, even the crust.

Layer 2: Use enough mushrooms to spread a 1/4 inch thick layer of mushroom mulch over the olive oil, leaving the crust bare

Layer 3: Spread about 1/8 inch of onion mulch over the mushrooms

Layer 4: Sprinkle a light layer of shredded mozzarella over the onions

Layer 5: Sprinkle a heavy layer of shaved or shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese over the mozzarella.

That's it! Now pour yourself a nice generous glass of vino from Maynard James Keenan at Caduceus Vineyards, kick back and read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain on your Kindle, and luxuriate in the incredible smells coming from your oven!
Bake at 375° until bottom of pizza crust is golden brown.

Hey! I almost forgot to say:

Work up an appetite shopping for a vintage camera at The Collector Detector, or Visit Us on Facebook!

NEW SX-70 FILM IS HERE!!!

It's here! The Impossible Project is now selling new SX-70 film!

Impossible's brand new PX Silver Shade Instant Film. Astonishing monochrome material in a limited First Flush Edition. Optimized for the use in traditional Polaroid SX 70 cameras.
First Flush Film is experimental material that will produce changing results depending on light conditions and temperature.

Click here to get you some!

You should also check out the website dedicated to this film for instructions and tips on using and manipulating the film.

GO ARTISTS GO!!

Support your local photographers!

If you're looking for a great photographer in the Chicago area, please stop by Katie Ryan's website, and take a gander! She's an amazingly talented photographer. Babies, weddings, special events, she'll rock them all!

Some interesting facts about Katie:

Katie Ryan focuses on a photojournalistic approach whether shooting a breaking story, an exciting soccer game, a bride and groom's first dance or a family portrait. She believes in capturing a moment rather than creating it. As a photojournalist she is able to fuse her love of photography with her passion of story telling.

Katie has had a love for photography since she was a young child and has been a professional photographer since 2001. She was given her first camera as a gift from her father for her tenth birthday.

Over the years Katie has photographed such people as Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley, retired Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce and United States President Barack Obama. She has had numerous photographs seen in such publications as Vine Line magazine, Spirit magazine and The Beverly Review.

When Katie photographs weddings, she gives her clients a non-traditional style of photography, which many find to be a romantic and refreshing alternative to traditional posed photography. Katie likes to tell a story through the lens of her camera, which is why her style appeals to so many.

She just can't put her camera down! When she is not working or taking pictures of her family and friends, Katie can be found shooting events for fundraisers & charities such as St.Baldrick’s foundation, The Chicago Fire Department, and The Lisa Doyle Fitzgerald Benefit.

Katie credits much of her success to the professionals she learned from while attending Columbia College Chicago. She was taught by world-renowned photographers such as Pulitzer Prize winner, John H. White of the Chicago Sun-Times, Chuck Osgood of the Chicago Tribune, and George Georgiou of Playboy magazine. While at Columbia, Katie enjoyed all the areas of photography she studied, but she concentrated and excelled in the areas of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Katie shares some of the stories she has told and the things she has seen with the photographs in this website.

And if you're currently in the New Orleans area, you are very lucky! The incredible Charles Silver has been spending a lot of time there, and is currently sharing his work based in this culturally rich city.

A blurb from Charles' website:

This first installment in the ongoing photodocumentary project by Charles Silver had its premier exhibit at the Cressman Center Gallery for Visual Art from July 4 to August 9, 2008. Interested parties may inquire through the Gallery or use this link to Contact Charles Silver directly regarding arrangements.

These photographs represent the starting point for long term ongoing projects documenting New Orleans in the post-Katrina environment. Three years after Katrina large parts of the city and its communities remain physically and psychologically devastated. Now even more devastation is threatening the city.

The project has concentrated on some of the endangered African American cultural traditions that are unique to New Orleans.

The majority of the photographs in this exhibit grew directly out of the concerns and wishes of friends within the cultural community of New Orleans. This community not only gave birth to Jazz but has also given birth to a range of cultural traditions unique to New Orleans. These traditions include Second Lines with brass bands, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs and the Black Mardi Gras Indian tribes. Since the vast physical devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 many socio-economic and political forces have further endangered these valuable cultural traditions.

And please, support the arts wherever you are!

Photos of Yore

So a bunch of us nut-burgers on Buzznet decided to do a Christmas in May exchange, mainly because we were bored. I was assigned to get something for my friend Boz, who is an internet celebrity in his own right. Boz's mother passed away last summer, and he had recently mentioned that she had used a Kodak box camera to take many of their family photos, so as part of his gift I threw in a Brownie box camera and an old Kodak instamatic.

He loved them! (yay!) And the best part is that both cameras have old film in them. This happens a lot - I am constantly getting cameras in that have rolls of partially exposed film still in them. I like to think that it's like dinosaur archaeology - a person was shooting a roll of film and then was suddenly caught in an ice age(!!!), when it's actually more likely that somebody shot some film and then forgot to get it developed, and then just never used that camera again.

Well, nevermind where it came from, it's still cool! There are quite a few people who develop film they've found in old cameras and post the images to the interwebs. There are even several Flickr groups dedicated to old exposed film.

Here are two interesting sites of people who develop old film and are passionate about older cameras:

http://www.merrillphoto.com/JunkStoreCameras.htm
http://www.westfordcomp.com/holga/index.html

So watcha waiting for? Find yourself an old camera with film in it at The Collector Detector now!

Photographic Archaeology

We've been watching a lot of Treasure Quest lately. This show hits on a lot of things I love: history, underwater photography, techie gadgets, archaeology, boats, and diving! Holy yes!

It's a fascinating show. These guys are the group that found the Titanic, and they operate a fleet of ships equipped with sea rovers that comb the ocean floor looking for shipwrecks. Operating cost per day on one of these rigs is upwards of $35,000 USD.

They use sonar to map the ocean floor and then dive on any sites that appear to be a ship or sub. Once down, the rover picks around looking for anything that can help to identify the identity of a downed ship: imprints on cannon, shoes, gun turrets, paddle wheels, burnt timber, etc. Most of the time they don't even have to bring the object to the surface to identify it, as the rover is equipped with lights and hi-res cameras.

Add in the cocky Scottish archaeologist, the team of brilliant brother engineers (one of whom their captain claims is a cyborg created by the other), the tough ex-submariner (who looks like a Hell's Angel of the Sea), various guests, bad weather, malfunctioning technology, and harassment by countries whose waters they're close to, and you've got HIGH SEAS DRAMA!

It brings up an interesting topic though. Photography is used for forensics, archaeology and entertainment so extensively we tend to take it for granted. Without cameras, how would we document a person's life from babyhood through to old age, watch our favorite movie or TV show, solve a crime, see the far reaches of outer space, document history, etc etc?

I guess there would be a lot less starving artists. ;D

So do your part! Get a nice vintage camera from The Collector Detector and start contributing!

Spirit Photography at Flickr Commons

I've been on Flickr for a few years now (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawnanthony), and being the vintage-obsessed geek and history buff that I am, I was fascinated when Flick introduced The Commons, which aims to be the central repository for the world's public photography archives.

I have spent hours looking at things like medical illustrations from the 1800s, past presidential inauguration pictures, nature photos, etc, but one set has really caught my interest: Spirit Photography.

First used by William Mumler in the 1860s, Spirit Photography is a type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of spiritual entities. Mumler is the guy who took the famous picture of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband Abraham.

The National Media Museum has put up a bunch of spirit photographs in the Flickr Commons, and I can't stop looking through them. Take a gander if you've got a minute, it's an incredibly interesting look at one of the first photo faking scams.

And when you're finished, come on over to The Collector Detector and buy an old vintage camera and make your own spirit photos!

Whistle While You Work...

One of the most important parts of selling vintage cameras is the restoration and cleaning of every camera that comes in the door. I have gotten pretty darn good at making a dirty camera shine up nice. I can handle dust and dirt with wicked aplomb, but there are a few things that people do to their cameras that really chap my hide.

And now, without further ado, the list of things that make me mad!

STICKERS. I cannot even express how much a sticker can reduce the value of a camera. And people put stickers on cameras for the weirdest reasons! I've seen stickers next to the shutter release that say, "1. Press Here", stickers below the wind knob that say "Wind" (!!!), stickers of the Spice Girls, decals of Nascar, and even Jesus stickers!

TAPE. Oh my god, tape. I have seen tape attaching manuals to the bottoms of cameras, tape keeping detailed instructions on exposure to the back of cameras, tape covering film windows and viewfinders, tape holding leatherette down, and tape wound around hand grips. Enough with the tape, people! Please! STOP TAPING THINGS.

ETCHING. Do you know that people used to etch their social security number on their belongings? I find this so strange in this day of identity theft. But I have run across numerous cameras with social security numbers. I've seen people's names of course, but I've also seen phone numbers, addresses, and post office boxes. And one camera named Betty.

PERMANENT MARKER. Ugh. This is so hard to remove. Especially when it's on leatherette. I have gone through countless replacement heads on my spinning toothbrush. I mean my extra special professional camera cleaning revolving brush tool. (Honest!)

GREASE PEN. This is an issue often found at auction houses. They mistakenly assume that grease pen is easily removable from most camera surfaces. This is not the case, especially when you are dealing with Bakelite or plastic, which can retain the color of the grease pen and can be incredibly difficult or impossible to remove. Auction houses, if you're reading this, Cease and Desist!! Puh-lease!

And lastly, ah, the pleasure of getting a camera with corrosion. Funnily enough, the worst part about corrosion in a camera for me is the smell! It's like old feet and rotten eggs mixed together! Eww!! Take the batteries out of your cameras when you store them people! For the love of all that is good and holy!

Now I know that most of these people thought they'd have their camera forever, and that I shouldn't complain about these problems on a used item, but, well, I just had to vent somewhere. Lucky youse guys. (My apologies for the Chicago accent slipping in)

Know what might make you (and me) feel better? A sparkly clean vintage camera!!