The power of photography, and why it's important to capture the past

[LouiseTopp]

Here are some shocking and fascinating photo's I found. Please tell me what you think? Thanks.

http://www.viralnova.com/weird-photos-from-history/

and also wierd jobs no longer existant

http://www.viralnova.com/jobs-that-dont-exist/

[tbob]

The jobs that no longer exist site made me think of the blacksmith in the village of Onondaga, Ontario in the sixties. He was probably in his sixties when I was a child and even then it was a rapidly vanishing trade. I suspect it was one of the last fully functional smithies left, and only still active because there was an popular horse plowing competition association in the local county. Still a need for shoes with cleats, plow sharpening and hardware. He retired just before I left Ontario in 1968 and what happened to the shop and equipment I have no idea

[LouiseTopp]

Yeah our blacksmith's are few and between, I have taken a shot of a saw mill which has been sold now and the land is going to be made into houses. When I was a little girl i used to wake up to the sound of buzz saws and drilling. No more now as the area is eerily quiet. I thought the gas pram was a bit scary.

Animals brought into hospital still happens today in special cases.

[Manfred M]

I was just thinking about photography and how it has changed over the decades.

The person who got me into serious photography trained under, Yousef Karsh's negative retoucher. Karsh used an 8 x 10 inch Calumet view camera in his work and once the negative was processed, the negative retoucher would clean up the negative before it went off to be printed.

I don't think there is too much call for that profession any more...

[GrahamS]

Here are some shocking and fascinating photo's I found. Please tell me what you think? Thanks.

http://www.viralnova.com/weird-photos-from-history/

I don't know who copied the photos to this site, but they got a lot of the captions wrong or left out pertinent info. Taken out of context, most photographs can appear to be "weird."

[davidedric]

Well, we do still have a milkman. The family has a local dairy farm, milks the cows, processes, bottles and delivers the milk - all from less than a mile away. Next time I see Dennis, I'll tell him he has a weird job

There are even one or two blacksmiths around (mostly doing wrought iron work nowadays), and quite a few farriers.

Dave

[Kris V]

There are still some farriers around -at least in Indiana.
This one makes house calls.
It's low quality - I pulled it from my FB - can't locate the original just now.

[rpcrowe]

When I was working in a non-profit agency which found jobs for persons with disabilities, I remember reading an excerpt from a magazine about jobs.

Farriers (a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of horses' hooves and the placing of shoes on their hooves, if necessary.) were in very short supply and could virtually name where they wanted to work.

And... this was in the late 1990's

[NorthernFocus]

There are still plenty of farriers around anyplace where there are enough horses to make a living at it. But the blacksmith typically was also the local metal worker. That work now falls to weld shops which exist in abundance in the USA.

It is also interesting how some professions survive in some cultures and disappear from others. When we were in Australia we enjoyed the fact that every small town still had a butcher and baker in spite of the grocery store next door. In the USA the marketing strategy of putting everything under one roof has run most standalone shops out of business except for in large downtown areas and specialty shops. Americans are in too much of a hurry to make more than one stop for shopping

[GrahamS]

Anywhere in the U.K. one may still have the milkman deliver the milk and buy meat from the family butcher on the local high street. There are plenty of farriers and lots of blacksmiths around. We also have shoe makers and milliners and village bakers. Tradition and all that.

[Shadowman]

Nice, thanks for the link.

[William W]

and also [weird] jobs no longer [existent]

I am keen that Coopers and Riddlers remain in work.

WW

[IzzieK]

Dan, that is what I missed here in the US...the butchers and bakers. I have to bake our bread three times a week because hubby wants them fresh whereas it is practically a waste doing that when I am in my Melbourne home because fresh bread is readily available in any nearby shopping areas and malls. I take advantage of buying my meat from the local butchers (from Tasmania) to fill up my freezer as I can order a cut I like from them. Compare that to my supermarket shopping here in MO, I tried to order a certain part of an animal only to be told that they can't do it. Most so-called butchers here in the supermarkets I go to are just mere shelves fillers. They are not real butchers.

[LouiseTopp]

True, our butcher used to put sawdust on the floor, apparently to soak up the blood. Our butchers still has the slaughter house out back with drain etc.