[LargeFormat] DIY Focusing Cloth and Blankies

[Brock Nanson]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Verna Knapp" <vernak@wvi.com>
To: <largeformat@f32.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: [LargeFormat] DIY Focusing Cloth and Blankies


> I wish my hair were not so slick. That sort of thing just slides off. I
> have better luck with a baseball cap that has a tie for under the chin,
> though that does not work well with the camera. Hmmm. Time for some
> experimental sewing, I think. An old fashioned sunbonnet, but with a
> very short or non-existent "poke" (front brim) just might work, and they
> are not hard to make. And if I sewed the neck shade long enough, it
> would be a fine dark cloth. Just flip it forward when needed. For those
> not familiar with a sunbonnet, they sometimes had a cloth sewed to the
> back to drape down over the neck and upper back to prevent sunburn back
> there. And there was a long "poke" brim in front to shade the face. They
> were used while working in the garden when I was a girl, back when a
> suntan was a negative and not a positive. Women valued a pale complexion
> back then. It said you did not have to work in the fields.
>
> Thanks for the idea!
>
> Verna

And what goes around comes around.  Now the suntan is falling out of favour,
and for good reason considering what the sun does to you these days.  Over
the last 15 years I've watched the Australians go from bronzed to alabaster.
Well, the women at least... many of the men are too tough to die of skin
cancer - or so they think.  We Canadians still haven't completely heard the
message as I see many people on the beach soaking up the radiation.

Verna, I'm not sure how to take the comment about 'working in the garden
when I was a girl, back when a suntan was a negative'...  if Coco Chanel
brough the suntan into fashion in the twenties, and you were a girl before
that time (say 10 years old) I make you to be about 90 or 95!  And still
carrying large format gear into the field!  To what do you attribute your
longevity? ;-)

Brock