Keeler press photo

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Posted By: runscott

Thought y'all might be interested in this. To the left is the actual cropped/marked photo. To the right is how it would have appeared when published.

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Posted By: Patrick McMenemy

Scott:

Thanks for posting the photo. Red Kleinow is one of the seven cathcers I collect.

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Posted By: petecld

Scott,

Don't you realize what you have!!!!!!!

It's a super rare "AAA cut-out" proof. I recommend you send it to "AAA" for garding but remember, they are tough graders.

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Posted By: runscott

You might notice that the "cropper and marker-upper guy" actually made a goof on this one. There's a guy hiding behind Keeler who was included as part of Keeler's back, making him look wider - check the extension of his belt to spot it. Seems like an obvious mistake to me, but it might just indicate that these guys were in a real hurry to get stuff ready for publication. This particular item went in a 2-column article, date unknown, in the "New York American".

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Posted By: Hankron

Very interesting, Scott

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Posted By: jeff s

...but why did you get rid of all those little birds in the background?

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Posted By: runscott

My son asked an intriguing question: "So how does the photo end up looking like the one on the right?".

Could you give us a description of what happens next? Doesn someone actually go "paint in" the areas with Jeff Sackman's "little birdies"?

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Posted By: Hankron

Scott, I will write up an answer for the next newsletter. I haven't been able to think up of any interesting topics lately, so will save this one.

For those who don't subscribe (or those who do), many of the past issues and articles are posted online at:

http://www.cycleback.com/newsletter.html

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Posted By: Hankron

I decided it wouldn't fit well into the next newsletter, so here goes. I will stick to the highlights, as making a photoengraving takes a long and dry(er) explanation.

When a newspaper or magazine would receive a photograph from their photo distributor (such as ACME), they would decide how they wanted the photo cropped and what extra details were needed. They would often mark up the photograph to show how the image should be cropped and how the image should be changed. These markings are in crayon, pencil, silver ink, black ink and sometimes other colored in. They would then make a negative of this photo and this negative would be used to make the image on the printing plate.

In order to make the background white, they blocked out the to-be-white areas on the negative. They usualy did this with an ink that did not allow any light to go through. As with any negative used to make a picture, the dark areas (blocked out by ink in this case) appear as light in the photograph and the light areas appeared as dark. So by blocking out an area with opaque ink, the resultimage would apear as white.

Silver ink, on the other hand, was usually used for different purposes. If you ever see silver ink markings on a photograpic image, it would usually appear as black in the newspaper picture.

So the marks on your photograph were basically directions for whomever was making and preparing the negative. The marks tell how the image is supposed to be cropped and what areas are supposed to be blocked out so they utlimately appear as white. As you your self note, the '2 col' indicates that the picture was to appear in the newspaper as a 2 colum wide picture.

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Posted By: Hankron

If you ever see an old newspaper or magazine picture with little arrows or numbers in the image (such as to point out a person in a crowd, or to label the players in those old Spalding Guide pictures), the printers literally pasted the arrows or numbers onto the original photograph. They likely had a drawer full of ready cutout arrows, signs and such. If you obtain the original photo, it will have the arrows and symbols literaly glued on front.