History on my desk

I'm having a "Woo hoo!" moment.  A small stack of Ansel Adams-related paperwork (photocopies) has arrived.  I haven't plowed through it yet, but here's one item that caught my eye:

10/14/41
Re: Mr. Ansel Adams
National Park Service

Appointment to position excepted from competitive examination, under Section 2. Executive Order 8743, dated April 23, 1941

Position: Photographic Muralist

Grade and Salary: POS-19, $22.22 per diem when actually employed, limited to 180 actual working days per annum, #10

Bureau: National Park Service

Branch: Branch of Interpretation

Headquarters: Yosemite Naitonal Park, California

Effective Date: Upon entrance on duty. Oct 14, 1941

/s/ J. Atwood Maulding
Signed, Director of Personnel

Cutting through the bureaucratese, this is Adams' appointment to photograph The Mural Project.

Definitely "Woo hoo!" worthy.

History on my desk

Power User

Good news: Even I can appreciate a long weekend, especially when the folks at Zazzle have seen fit to approve another Adams-sourced stamp.

This time, it's "Looking up at Wires of the Boulder Dam Power Units," 1941.  You may recognize the image from one of our earliest ties.  Although the original scan was taken at a mere 479x479 dpi; since it was of an 8"x10" print, we're left with plenty of resolution for a 2-inch postage stamp (or even a tie).

This image is a particular favorite of mine, mainly because it's so different from the other recovered Mural Project images.

If you can drop by the main Interior building (1849 C St NW, Washington, DC -- see below),  take a peek around the entranceway.  This image is tucked away, inside the security gates.

BTW, I should ask: What do you think?  Is this a respectable stamp, or what?  Shouldn't the US Postal Service print stamps like this on its own?  Ah well.  I'm happy to help.


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Power User

An Unnamed Peak

A bit of odd scheduling this week kept me from much film development, but I did manage a successful close to an excellent Friday.  I'm celebrating with a look at a stamp (yes, a postage stamp).

There aren't many postage stamps out there with 12,500 dpi (linear) scans of genuine Ansel Adams prints as their raw material.  This is one:

An Unnamed Peak, Kings River Canyon, California
National Archives no. 79-AAH-8Ansel Adams

As regular readers (and Adams-philes) know, the Mural Project images are based on original prints roughly the size of an average piece of typing paper.  Neither stamps nor murals are quite what Adams was burning & dodging for when he created these prints.  However, I would put it to you that it still makes for one heck of a stamp.

As a side note, if we have any readers who can shoot HD video of this location, please feel free to let me know.  Just post a comment.  Thanks.

An Unnamed Peak

RSS Repair!

Good news: My kludge worked.  Feeding this Blogger blog to Twitter via TwitterFeed and having Facebook catch the Twitter RSS seems more effective than just letting Facebook catch the blog's RSS.

Definitely not what I had in mind... but I'll get over it.

RSS Repair!

RSS Repair?

Our RSS feed to Facebook was broken, so I rigged a feed via Twitter (Blogger to Twitter to Facebook).  Let's see if it works!

RSS Repair?