The Jersey Shore

This week’s post from The Capewell Glass Negative Collection finds our photographer John Capewell of Westville, New Jersey seated on the beach of Atlantic City with some friends and/or family members some time very early in the Twentieth Century. Capewell is in the back to the left and next to him, slightly blurry, is his wife Ella.

I had posted a variation of this glass negative a while back to my Flickr Photostream and one of my viewers made the comment,

I see the roofs of the Brighton Casino, The Marlborough, The Traymore and the New Windsor. The photo is between 1902 and 1906 judging by the building that are present and not present.

I cropped in on some of the details to afford a closer look.

I like the darkly dressed woman with her ghostly children blurred due to moving during the photographic material’s slow exposure. The woman stares out at the ocean.

The smiling Capewell’s are in the lower right. Above John’s head and above the Brady’s Bath sign is a Holter’s beer ad with the tagline above the logo reading That’s The Beer. This was well before prohibition and the events that take place on the show Boardwalk Empire. Notice that the boardwalk is teeming with people.

Above is Fralingers Academy Pavilion.

Below is the variation of the negative that I posted to Flickr. It was shot on a bright day on a sandy beach so all of the faces were fairly dark. I had dodged the faces and try to bring out as much detail in the faces as I could. My initial fiddling made the background a little light.

As with all of the photographs in the Capewell Collection, I placed the 5″ x 7″ glass negative on a lightbox and shot them with a digital camera locked down on a tripod. The processing was done digitally on a Mac using Adobe Photoshop.

If you’re new to this collection of John B. Capewell’s glass negatives, use the handy navigation links below to explore earlier posts! Don’t forget to LIKE The Capewell Glass Negative page on Facebook!