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Tricks of Advertising Photographs

Striking action photos of ships at sea or of vacationists riding the surf at Waikiki, used in illustrating advertisements in national magazines, are made in New York studios with the use of models and ingenious mechanical aids. Mr. McGinnis tells you how one big studio produces these remarkable photographs.

by Paul McGinnis

AN ADVERTISER can now get a picture of nearly anything on earth made in a few hours in the studios of Underwood & Underwood in New York City with the aid of mechanical devices. He can order his bathing suits photographed on the beach at Waikiki and have a picture in a day or two which can not be distinguished from one really taken at the famous tropical beach. Some of these pictures cost as much as $1,000. apiece, but they have been so successful that more than half the advertisements in twenty-six leading magazines are now illustrated by photographs rather than drawings.

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Camera Trap Catches Unusual Poses of Smaller Forms of Wild Life

AN ORDINARY mouse trap and a few feet of 1/2″ x 1-1/4″ stock are all the parts required to make this automatic shutter release for your box camera. The device, which should be painted green, is unique in catching unusual poses of small forms of wild life.

At one end of the 51-in. base, construct a mount for the camera. The rear of the mount is 5-3/4″ and the front is 5-1/2″ to allow the lens to point down into the camera field. Screw the trap to the base of the device directly below the lens. A short length of wire connects the camera lever to the trap spring. Another length runs from the trigger through wire screw-eyes in the base to the opposite end where a nut or morsel of food is fastened as bait.

British Invent Midget Camera

ANSWERING the demands of photographic fans for even more compact equipment, a London manufacturer has perfected a tiny camera which takes pictures the size of a postage stamp.

The midget device takes eight photographs on a roll of film and is to sell for about a dollar.

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DARING DEATH With NEWS CAMERAMEN

by TED DALTON
Picture Assignment Editor, the New York News.

Why wasn’t De Pinedo rescued? Why couldn’t mechanics save him if photo sleuths got close enough to take tragic shots—?

Why do news cameramen dare death, go to any length to get pictures of executions, burning munitions factories, gang wars—?

Ted Dalton, camera ace, gives the answers in this thrilling yarn about Unsung Knights of the Shutter!

THE universal clamor today is for pictures —for action photographs of thrilling drama, of death-defying adventures, and of disasters in every quarter of the globe.

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Weird Futurist Designs Found by Camera in Modern Industry

You may get lost in the dizzy maze of triangles shown above, but it is only one of the surprising modernistic designs now found in the world of machines. This shows what you would see if you looked down one of the 820-foot masts of the Rugby, England, radio station.

They look like whirling disks with concentric circles giddily revolving, but actually they are what the camera saw when it photographed rolls of paper in a printing plant.

Curiously suggestive of the long leaves of tulip plants are these slender steel chutes that spiral downward in a German post office.

Standing like an army of gnomes drawn up at attention, the rigid fingers of these rubber gloves gave the photographer a highly futuristic picture. The gloves, stretched on forms after dipping, are being sent to the vulcanizing room to receive final treatment before leaving the factory.

This is not a futurist drawing of a ballet dancer, but an unusual photo of a spiral staircase and lights.

Camera Sculptures FACES from Subjects

The machine has at last invaded the world of art. An amazing new mechanism recently devised combines the principles of the movie camera and the pantograph to turn out plaster busts just as an ordinary camera makes photographic portraits.

Making the bust requires a sitting of only five minutes on the part of the subject. During this time 400 still photographs are made from as many angles by a rotating camera, as illustrated above.

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Pinhole ‘LENS’ - Secret of New Photo Miracles

WORKING with a tiny needle and a wafer-thin piece of sheet metal, William A. Wallace, New York photographer, has taken an amazing series of pictures of New York skyscrapers. From street level to topmost floor, he has registered every detail on his film with his camera placed just across the street from these architectural giants. An ordinary camera, similarly placed, would take in only the entrance way and the first two or three floors.

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First Photo Took 8 Hours Now - 20,000 in a Second

By H.C. DAVIS

IN 1830, it required eight hours to take a photograph. The other day, Baron C. Shiba’s remarkable camera recorded 20,000 pictures in one second (P.S.M., Nov. ‘29, p. 31). In this dramatic advance, which has taken place within a single century, a Parisian painter of stage scenery and a magic cupboard in his home workshop laboratory played leading roles.

The painter was Louis Daguerre, who made photography practicable. Before his time, a few indifferent pictures had been made by the painfully slow process of exposing asphalt-covered plates all day and then treating them with solvents.

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Phonograph-Movie Machine Plays Tunes for Pictures

A COMBINATION phonograph, and motion-picture projector that plays appropriate music as the film is being shown has been invented by A. L. Edminson, of Los Angeles, Calif. After eight years of experiment he has combined the two machines into a cabinet slightly larger than that of the standard phonograph. The upper part contains the phonograph; the lower a motion-picture projector.

The films are exhibited on a silk screen, measuring 18 by 22 inches, which is placed behind the doors of the sounding-box. It is claimed that the pictures are projected clearly enough to be seen by an audience 40 feet away.

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NATURALIST, POSING AS CACTUS, SNAPS DESERT ANIMALS

No Sherlock Holmes of fiction ever disguised himself with more versatility than Arthur N. Pack, president of the American Nature Association. When this well-known naturalist wants to approach timid animals in their native haunts, without frightening them out of range of his camera, he dons an appropriate costume.

A disguise resembling a giant desert cactus was his creation during a recent expedition through the desert wastes of Arizona along the Mexican border, with William L. and Irene Finley, noted naturalists. Clad thus, shy desert animals walked up to him to be photographed.

Mountain goats, among the most difficult of wild animals to approach, were successfully photographed by Pack. He fashioned for himself a white goat costume with horns and long whiskers.

Pack’s use of disguises was suggested by natives of central Africa who creep through the tall grass, wearing a wooden headdress carved to resemble a bird. Pretending to stop and peck, from time to time, the hunter can approach birds and other game dose enough to capture them.

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He Made Sky Mapping a Big Business

High above the broken floor of the Rio Grande River basin, an airplane growls monotonously over 32,000 square miles, each click of its Cyclopean camera bringing nearer to completion the largest photographic mapping project ever undertaken in the United States.

EXACTING and tedious is the scientific job of gathering up 32,000 square miles and literally pasting them in your hat. Only one man is utterly capable and he is the fellow who supervises the shooting and assembling of this vast mosaic.

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Camera Worn Like Wrist Watch Loads Thirty Six Pictures

Latest in the line of miniature cameras is a tiny affair worn like a wrist watch. Sighted easily by raising the wrist to eye level, it carries a load of thirty-six exposures despite its diminutive size. It has an f4.5 lens and a focusing scale graduating from one foot to infinity.