Ticket To Ride

There are so many ways to get into the spirit of the Wild West, and one of those ways is through the most excellent board games coming out that use the West as their theme. One such game that George and I highly endorse is Ticket To Ride.

It's easy to learn, easy to play, and scores pretty low on the "will ruin friendships" scale. 

Monopoly: Who knew that a little pewter Scotty dog could cause such violence? 

You take on the role of an 1800s railroad tycoon, trying to complete your train routes before your competitors can. You earn points for each train you place on the map and for each route completed. The player with the most points wins!

A quick summary of play: As a player you're given a set of plastic trains and are dealt several train tickets which depict different routes on the board. The routes you keep are kept secret. You're also randomly dealt four colored cards to begin collecting, which you'll eventually use to build your routes. Certain route options require a specific number of a specific color of card, and once you have collected all of the color you need, you "purchase" that length of track and place your little trains on it to claim it as yours.  The challenge and the fun is when multiple players end up with routes that collide, and you have to find creative ways to make your route work and claim your lengths of track before other players can! 

You can find Ticket To Ride at most neighborhood board game stores and on websites like Amazon. You can learn more about this version of the game (and more!) at a website devoted to board gaming, Board Game Geek. Happy gaming! 

Photo Craft: Christmas Tree Charm

Here you are, having a wonderful time dressing up and getting your photo taken, and after carefully choosing which shots you want to print you think, "I want them all! But what will I do with them?"

Why not turn one into a Christmas tree ornament?

In this tutorial I show you how!

Pain Is Beauty, or Corsets and Rib Removal

There's a belief that Victorian era women removed a rib to get their tiny waists.

Exhibit A.

Though rib removal seems like a plausible way to get things done in our modern day, back in Victorian times surgery was quite different. Anesthesia was not what it needed to be, and death by infection was very high. If rib removal were an actual thing, about half of the women attempting it would have died.

This was a time when even Coca Cola was considered medicine. On second thought, maybe Victorian medicine wasn't all bad. 

The old "Remove A Rib" tale is just a myth, I'm happy to say! Instead, women achieved the wasp waist through tight lacing, a method of tying corsets tighter and tighter over time, permanently altering the shape of the body. They key is the amount of time it took. Some women may have tightened their corsets to make their waists six inches smaller in one go, but it was more likely they tightened them two or so inches at a time, eventually working their way down. As many girls began wearing corsets as early as age thirteen (or sometimes younger), they had years to work toward a desired size.

If you keep your eye out, you can see the influence of corsets all around you, sometimes in the form of wedding gowns,

haute couture, 

and even medical devices.

Or the odd souvenir photo, of course.

Through my theatrical experiences I've had the good luck to wear a corset a time or two, and I can enthusiastically state that they aren't nearly as painful or uncomfortable as feared. Indeed, the most frightening part about them is simply sitting down.

Wild West Jeopardy!

Let's play a round of Wild West Jeopardy. 

Subject: Wearables

Clue:

The answer in the form of a question:

Many of our customers like their portraits to be as historically accurate as they can be, and often question us when we give them blue jeans. But it's true, jeans have quite a long history and were popular with old West cowboys.

Denim jeans began when sailors from Genoa, Italy introduced a cotton corduroy material to Nimes, France. The French experimented with the fabric until they came up with their own version of it which they called denim. Around 1851 a German man named Levi Strauss emigrated to the United States and started a dry goods store that sold this denim material, which was frequently purchased by a local tailor named Jacob Davis. 

In 1873 Strauss and Davis came up with the idea of adding rivets to stress points on clothing, and found denim to be a great material for work pants (which they called waist overalls). Their comfort and durability made the pants an instant success among working men, and in 1885 you could buy a pair for the smashing price of $1.25.

It wasn't until the 1950s when high school kids wanted a rebellious look that jeans began to take the journey from "waist overalls" to the clothing staple that they are today. And what a journey they've taken in these short  141 years, a journey of which I shall be forever grateful.  

Welcome!

Welcome to the Cody Old Time Photo blog page! We're a photo studio where you dress up in costumes and get your picture taken like you're from the American wild west. We're located at 1177 Sheridan Avenue in the quaint western town of Cody, Wyoming, just outside of Yellowstone Park's East gate. 

This is Yellowstone!
(Photo by Ernie Hathaway)

This is Cody,

and this is us! Well, this is the shop. 

This is us. 

This blog is for sharing with you some of our adventures, tips on photography and costuming, and even historical tidbits about Yellowstone, Cody, you name it!  We look forward to writing for you, and should you make the grand journey to our tiny town, we hope you drop in and say hello!