Hot, Hot, Heat

I have always enjoyed the writings of Gene Stratton Porter and how she draws you into her writings visually- and without pictures too! What I think is most significant for me about this selection is not so much her hunt for the moth, but the realization that she is hauling around a really heavy set of camera equipment to photograph with through the marshes, swamps, and bogs! Here is a good representation of the type of camera she was using- she would have also had a large, wooden tripod to attach it to, a case holding many negative holder (where the film is kept), release cord, large, dark blanket for standing under (in that hot, hot, heat!), and I'm probably not naming everything..... In order to take the actual picture of the moving specimen, she had to stand underneath the blanket, look through the glass (which has everything backwards and upside down, manually focus by moving the bellows back and forth, set the aperture, close the shutter, take the negative holder out of the case, put it in the back of the camera, take the darkslide off carefully, press down on the release cord, take the picture, and then put the darkslide cover back in and remove the negative holder...all awhile, hoping that the specimen hasn't moved! I am in awe of by her diligence and persistence. With all of our digital camera fanciness we have today, we have forgotten so much of our past- and how perhaps there was more appreciation for species, like moths, because of how time consuming it was to actually take that picture! There were no such thing as a snapshot back then. These images would have been indispensable and precious to the one who captured them. Their value, undoubtable, was unmeasurable.