'ROARING' 20s and... Paleontology?
Ah, yes... the Roarin' 20s!
No more war - soldiers comin' home...
Automobiles... Electricity...
Everything was getting better, bigger, and easier to get your hands on...
The economy grew by 42%... Forty Two Percent!!!
Jazz was in the air...
Flappers were swingin'...
Booze was flowin'...
Shhh... Don't tell anyone about that last one... Prohibition, ya' know.
And raging debates were taking place among paleontologists...
Um... wait... what!?! Paleontologists? Hey, buddy... is someone zozzled on foot juice?
Yep, paleontology.
Apparently the Tyrant Lizard King (Tyrannosaurus Rex) was having a bit of an up hill battle in claiming the thrown. You see, there was some debate as to its classification... and you know how those paleontologists get when they can't agree on classification.
Um, yeah - they snuff at one another and storm off to measure some things and jot notes detailing millimeters and geology terms.
Okay, so these paleontologists (Matthew, Brown, Parks, and Huene) were having a bit of an ongoing debate that pretty much became a flurry and lasted for a good portion of the 20s.
Good news - they figured it out... and now we have our Tyrant Lizard King.
Bad news - it wasn't exactly headline news in your daily Tribune.
Or maybe that was good news, too... or sort of 'middlin' news.
At any rate, there had been lots of lookin' at fossils and trying to discern any tiny little detail that would settle said dispute once and for all. Aaaaand I'm pretty sure the final piece of evidence that settled the debate went something like this...
Picture #1: Paleontologist makes exciting discovery about some tiny but key piece of evidence...
Okay, even if you're not a dinosaur person ya' kinda' gotta' go with this - trust me, it was VERY exciting to them and still is to dinosaur folk like my little buddy - and, therefore, to me 'cause it is pretty darn exciting seein' his face light up when he talks about some new discovery that I completely don't understand but totally try to so that I can be excited with him.
Picture #2: Paleontologist is cautiously excited about said discovery...
Picture #3: Paleontologist checks and rechecks the details of the discovery...
Picture #4: Paleontologist 'excitedly' documents details of discovery...
To be honest, picture #4 could just as likely be the paleontologist writing a snarky note to the other paleontologist or in some soon-to-be-published scientific paper with a 'nanny-nanny-boo-boo' tone to gloat... but I'm going to, for the moment, assume these 1920s paleontologists were some pretty reserved folks since I don't see a lot of historical record about wild pale-ontological parties... and, seriously, we know they document everything.
Pictures 5 and 6: Color edits of pictures 1 and 2 - just 'cause... my son was such a good sport through this shoot (and all my previous ones) and has promised to do more shoots just to make me happy so I just couldn't skip sharing my handsome little man in his hat and 'spenders that he wore and posed in just for me even though he hates the hat... the 'spenders... and posing.
I pushed clarity a tiny bit on the color shots but dropped it (and added a bit-o-grain) on the b/w shots... I shot all these using my Pentax K1Mii wearing my vintage 50 1.4... and I used 3 Godox ad200 strobes - one wearing a small strip box with grid (that's the key light coming almost straight in from camera position - neither horizontal nor vertical but rotated at about a 45 degree angle), one wearing a little velcro on 6"x6" soft box (that one is just to camera right filling in on the 'tools', pencils' and envelope), and one wearing nothing (being held by my wife to put a bit-o-light on the typewriter - she is standing behind/next to my son so directly across from camera/me). The backdrop for the shot is my collapsible black backdrop hanging on a stand.
In frame talent: The most cooperative and handsome son a guy could ask for.
In frame props: My son's old desk, my old Underwood typewriter, my Kodak Retina IIa, my Revere Model 88, various 'tools' from my grandfather and my wife's father, my grandfather's WWII Airforce ID and papers, my old suspenders, hat (from Amazon), and one of my all-time favorite Father's Day presents - an actual cast of one of the teeth from the T-Rex at Chicago's Field Museum, Sue.
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