California – Cindy Garber Iverson

Posts Tagged ‘California’

Another photographic mystery to solve

July 23, 2015| Photography of the past

I love vintage photographs of the San Francisco Bay Area, so when I found this particular image while browsing through a local antique shop I had to buy it. A sticker on the back of the photograph attributes Alfred P. Singer, a photographer in San Francisco in the 1950s-60s. Other than that, I’ve little to go on in identifying the location and circumstances of this photograph. Still… it intrigues me.

From the photograph, I can glean some clues:

It’s a parade of some sort
The side of the float says “Fruitvale” with a missing “L”. Fruitvale is a district of Oakland, California
The side of the float has the letters “SGW”. I’ve found mention of a lodge or fraternal organization called “N.S.G.W.” in late 19th century and early 20th century newspaper articles. I’ve also seen it in old family photographs of Golden Gate Park. UPDATE: A friend on Facebook helped me out with this one. The initial stand for Native Sons of the Golden West.
The large disc behind the woman is a huge replica of a gold pan. It reads “California the Golden 1850-1950”. The photograph is probably of a parade that occurred in 1950.

What I can find about Alfred P. Singer

When I did a search of documentation on Alfred P. Singer on the records on Ancestry.com, I found that he is listed as a commercial artist in room 335 of the Mourn Building in San Francisco in 1955. In 1959, Alfred and his wife Marcella are living at 2134 41st Avenue in San Francisco with his place of work being at 112 Market Street. He is again listed as a commercial artist. Other documents show that his wife’s name was spelled “Marzella”.

In February 1949, Alfred and Marzella are on the passenger list for the S. S. General W. H. Gordon arriving in San Francisco from Shanghai, China. It shows his age as 42 and her age as 38. Both are listed as “Austrian” with the destination address of 719 W. 180th Street, New York, New York. However, it looks like he never made it to New York. I wonder if he fell in love with the Bay Area and just decided this was home. He would have arrived in the Bay Area only the year prior to when he took the photograph of the parade float. I wonder what must have been going through his mind as he watched the parade go by in his new “hometown”.

It turns out that Alfred became a naturalized citizen in 1954. I found the document at FamilySearch.org. He was living at 3616 Sacramento Street in San Francisco by then.

According to multiple documents, Alfred’s birth date was 11 June 1906, and he died 6 January 1988. The California Death Index shows his full name as Alfred Peter Singer with his mother’s maiden name being Beigl. The U.S. Social Security Death Index shows that Alfred P. Singer’s last residence was San Francisco. It makes me happy to know that he stayed.

Identifying the buildings in the photograph

I haven’t been successful yet in identifying the building in the photograph. Fortunately, my husband is familiar with both downtown San Francisco and downtown Oakland (having worked in both places). Using Google street view, we should be able to identify the exact location. If anyone recognizes it before we do, please leave a comment and let us know.

0 comment

In case you need a reminder today…

July 8, 2014| Licensing, Photography, Stock images

Sometimes you just need to kick off your shoes… and play.

Comments Off

California dreamin’ can even happen when you’re already in California

July 7, 2014| Licensing, Photography, Stock images

I count myself extremely blessed to live the San Francisco Bay Area. And I consider my being a native of this beautiful place to be even more of a blessing. I’ve lived and visited other places and if it’s been farther inland I begin to feel this landlocked feeling like I need to get back to where the land meets the sea. I don’t have an everyday view of the water (very few of us in the Bay Area do), but I always know it’s there. I’m only a short 3 mile (4.82 km) drive to the marina and then I can see the water.

When I want to see the ocean and the surf in all it’s splendor I have to drive a bit farther. Stinson Beach (pictured above) is a lovely scenic hour’s drive away while Pacifica State Beach (pictured below) is a little less than an hour’s drive in good traffic. I can’t usually just bop down to the beach for a quick walk in the surf in the middle of my day. It’s an excursion that has to have a larger block of time and usually more forethought than my quick jaunts down to the marina.

Sometimes I can feel “landlocked” sitting here even though I’m in California—like today when I’ve had to do things in my studio. It’s days like today that I’m really grateful for cameras and the technology of taking photographs. I can bring up an image from my last trip to the beach… bring it up nice and big on my iMac monitor… and suddenly I don’t feel “landlocked” anymore.

Comments Off

Why it is SO important to label your photos in some way, shape, or form

July 3, 2014| Photography of the past

Along with taking photographs and creating photographic art, I also digitally restore and preserve antique and vintage photographs (particularly those belonging to my family). Decades ago, my mother inherited a photo album belonging to her great aunt, Maggie. The photos within the album date back over 100 years ago with most being taken between 1900 and 1910. I have been scanning them on my pro-level art scanner at 600 dpi and digitally restoring each one (there are over 130 of them).

Earlier this week, I came across a group of photos (above). Maggie was usually good about gluing photos into the albums in batches that matched the order in which they were shot… usually. Sometimes she would write a date above or on a photo. Sometimes she would write a location. But oftentimes she didn’t. The group of photos I found had her standing in front of a building that looked a lot like one of the California missions and were labeled “Summer 1905”. With only that to go on, I hunted around the internet for pictures of all the California missions and compared each one until I found the correct identification for my photos—Mission Delores (La Mision San Francisco de Asis) at 3321 16th Street in San Francisco.

Later on in the album, I came across a lone photo of a beautiful church with no dates and no labels.

For some reason, I really wanted to identify the building. Maggie didn’t waste film on just anything. Although she was an amateur photography enthusiast she wasn’t from wealth or means—just a working class family that loved to shoot photographs with their own little inexpensive cameras.

So I had a mystery on my hands.

I hunted the internet for photos of historic churches in San Francisco and the surrounding areas where Maggie frequented—Oakland, San Jose and Monterey. Nothing. I had a feeling that I would have to find a photo of the same vintage around 1905 or earlier because my intuition was telling me that the 1906 earthquake was going to be the reason why I couldn’t find a contemporary photo of the edifice.

My hunting produced nothing. I finally posted my photo to Facebook and Twitter with a plea asking if anyone recognized the structure.

Late that night, I got a text from my brother asking if I was still hunting for an I.D. of the church. I said, “Yes”.

For the next couple of hours, we each hunted and texted from our respective living rooms looking for an answer. At one point my brother commented, “This is like geocaching… except without any coordinates.”

We were both about to give up when I texted him one of the photos from Mission Delores that I’d identified earlier (below). I said, “I thought I had a hunt when I figured out where this one was. Little did I know it was easy compared to the one I’m looking at now!”

There was a pause in the text thread and then my brother texted, “Cindy I hope you won’t be mad… but a sliver of the church you’re looking for is in that last photo… Ha ha ha ha… Now that is classic… It’s right friggin’ next door!!”

After I figured out what he was talking about, I was stunned. He was right. There was just the tiniest identifiable sliver of the church in the photo I had sent him that wasn’t visible in any of the others from that group I could have sent him instead. Coincidence? I think not. I was floored because he was able to see on his tiny iPhone what I couldn’t see on my mongo iMac screen.

I googled around and found out that my intuition was indeed correct. The stone chapel no longer existed. Only 8-10 months after Maggie took the photo of the church and Mission Delores, the stone chapel was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of April 1906 never to be rebuilt as it was. Instead, a basilica was constructed on the site and completed in 1918. That’s what stands on the site today.

My brother wrote of our great aunt Maggie, “Wow, talk about pulling a Forrest Gump.”

Looking out on the internet, I could only find a handful of other photos showing the original structure at Mission Delores like the one below from 1898 at MissionLocal.

It only seemed appropriate for me to digitally stitch Maggie’s two photos together after they’d been separated in two different parts of her album for almost 110 years. I applied a bit of Photoshop magic and voila!

Again and again, as I go through these old photos I desperately wish someone would have labeled more of the photos with dates and people’s names. Although I can often recognize family members and places, there are many that I can’t. It is so sad, because some of the same faces appear over and over in so many photos that I know they were important friends—those friends that are at every outing, every wedding, and every milestone of life. I know that if I knew their names, I might be able to track down their descendants and present them with a piece of history they never knew existed. It has taught me the overwhelming value of labeling photographs regardless of whether you think anyone will care in the future. Because you never know… you may be “pulling a Forrest Gump” and not even know it.

Comments Off

Lifeguard station

June 30, 2014| Licensing, Photography, Stock images

While I was at Stinson Beach recently shooting photographs, I saw the lifeguard stations spaced along the length of the beach and wanted to get the perfect composition including one of them. It was the weekend of Father’s Day, so there were a lot of beachgoers crowded close to the first lifeguard station closest to the restrooms and parking lot. Since I typically don’t like to include recognizable people in my compositions, I started walking farther down the beach where it was less convenient to amenities and also less crowded. I came upon one lifeguard station that was relatively isolated and unmanned. I stood and waited until one of the many seagulls came into the frame and I started shooting.

This was the shot I liked most as it came straight out of the camera…

The composition wasn’t perfect because of a few things that I didn’t have much control over. There was unwanted composition clutter like the couple, beach towels, the flip flops strewn about in front of the lifeguard station, and the car that drove into the shot just as the seagull flew in at the right time.

Using Photoshop’s latest CC version with it’s great content-aware patching tool made cleaning up the unwanted composition clutter fairly easy.

Then I needed to focus on the points in the composition that I did want to highlight. I wanted the eye of the viewer to move through the composition in a sort of modified S-curve from the top of the hill to the seagull in flight to the lifeguard station below and then the sand on the lowest right edge of the composition.

I played with some of the actions that I have in my arsenal and found that SunKissed by CoffeeShop (free to download here) worked very well and added the warmth I wanted to convey in this beach scene as well as a subtle lens flare in the upper right corner to push the eye toward the hill on the top left. I used exposure, levels, and vibrance adjustment layers to pull out the aqua color I wanted in the lifeguard station. I also did a little burning with the burn tool to enhance the shadows on the seagull so it would stand out more against the hillside.

In the end, I came up with a final photograph that has an interesting vintage feel to it like one of those old black and white postcards that’s been colorized. It conveys the peace and solitude I wanted while also having motion from the seagull. I got the warmth I wanted to convey as well as if the viewer can feel the coastal sunshine emanating from the frame to warm them. I want the viewer to feel like they could step right into the scene and be there… to feel it… to smell the salt air… to hear the seagull’s calls overhead.

Click above to “try on” sizes, mats and frames for fine reproduction prints