Secret camera—the photography of Horace Engle

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Abstract
Snap-shooting became practical with the appearance of the commercial dry plate, but serious photographers continued to use the tripod as the camera support of choice. The user of a hand-held camera was something of an adventurer, like the early 20th century news photographer, Jimmy Hare, who, his biographer claims", was one of the first, if not the first, to use a camera hand-held. The event occurred in England in 1882 at a celebration of the centenary of free ballooning. Hare's attempt to use a tripod-mounted camera for a picture of an ascension was thwarted by the unpredicatable movements of spectators and balloon. In the words of Cecil Carnes: 'The huge bag was duly inflated, but the moment it left the ground Jimmy's troubles began. With its first sensation of buoyancy, the balloon began to lurch hither and yon with the stability of a drunken man on stilts. As he tried vainly to keep it in focus long enough to make the exposure, Jimmy's camera spun on its tripod as weirdly as the gas bag itself, and whenever he thought he had it quiet for a second, the excited spectators in front of him would get their silly fat heads bobbing up and down before the lens.

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