# 1877 Birmingham Show



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

This is how they used to announce the winners of the poultry shows. If your bird won in its class it got a drawing or illustration of it.


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## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Robin, if you think these birds look more realistic, I can share how they did it.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

They certainly are more representative of an anatomically correct bird. 

Which Birmingham?


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## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

England. The illustration is from the London News. For the bigger shows they hired the artists ahead of time. While a photograph may have sufficed, I'm guessing there were issues with photographing live chickens at that time. They did photograph eggs and other aspects of the show including the show floor. What they did was use a shadow projector to sketch the bird's actual profile as best they could, then did quick sketches of the birds' details. Then, later they made the actual portrait sketch of the bird that they would use. I am guessing that's why we still have profile views for conformation instead of 3/4 views etcetera. Today, they still have a tradition of photographing winning birds with their owners for the newspaper.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Was photography advanced enough at that time to get a clear pic? 

If they were doing shots of other areas of the shows it would seem they were.


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## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Well, that's exactly it, due to the longer exposure times, it was harder to photograph a chicken because they wouldn't stay still enough and they couldn't waste a bunch of film trying to get a good shot.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

OK, that makes a lot more sense.


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