My Photo Postcard Era: 1990-2005

The picture postcard has been around since 1897 in America. I collected my first cards on a family vacation to the MidWest during the summer of 1966.  Some time in the latter part of the 1970s my twin brother introduced me to antique postcards via a visit to a postcard show at an old hotel in Pasadena. I bought one old card,  which I still have.  A decade later I was attending local postcard and vintage paper shows on a semi regular schedule. Being a photographer I had made black and white postcards beginning about 1974 using Kodak postcard paper which had a divided back and the word P O S T C A R D  printed across the top portion of the card.  But in 1990 I had the bright idea that I could make cards in the darkroom without the Kodak paper cutting my own double weight paper to size and stamping the reverse side with a custom made stamp. I also employed a method to print captions on to the sensitized side of the card using lithographic film.  It was fun while it lasted. The last cards I printed in the darkroom were done about 2005, or when digital photographer finally persuaded me to leave the chemical behind.

Here is a very random sampling. Part 1 :

Thanks for visiting!  Jim Staub

The Parade

Living in the city of Pasadena the annual Rose Parade almost insists that I take the camera out for street photography. It's like a stream that has suddenly been stocked with fish - to use an angler metaphor. The action takes place prior, during and following the parade.   Here are a few frames from the 2015-16 Rose Parade folder.

 Jim Staub, 12-30-16

The Streets Played

Reading the streets is a survival requirement for the bicyclist. The other vehicle bigger than you. A pothole, a car part ahead sharking for the careless.  There is a language, and I converse. Linger with the camera; note the lines then...  look both ways, and take the pieces home like any other coyote.

Jim Staub, 11-12-16  

Photographs 2012 to 2015, about.

New Substrates

Substrate - A layer that underlies something. 

Metamorphosis  - A major chance in appearance, form, structure of someone or something.

Topography - The arrangement of natural and artificial physical features of an area.

 Influences - Satellite space images. Microbiology images. Dreams.