Patineur Grotesque is Australia’s oldest comic film. (National Film and Sound Archive)

• Related Link: Watch the Patineur Grotesque clip

The earliest known surviving film to be shot in Australia, featuring a rollerskater performing on a street in Melbourne, has been found and restored.

The comic sequence, Patineur Grotesque (Humorous Rollerskater), was shot by French filmmaker Marius Sestier in October 1896 and features the 19th-century equivalent of a well-known gesture of contempt.

Sally Jackson from the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra says the rude message was probably aimed at the filmmaker’s business rival.

“The rollerskater, when he skates around, flips up his coat tails on several occasions and on the back you can see a big white hand,” she said.

“There’s one particular finger that’s a little bit higher than all the rest.

“Really what he was doing was giving his competitor the finger.”

Ms Jackson says the film was sent to Australia to introduce cinema to the colony.

“Australians didn’t start making films until sometime later,” she said.

“There were attempts the following year, but the fact is it [was] Australia’s first comic film.

“He [the actor] was a comic rollerskater and we think he was a theatrical artist but we’re not sure, so it makes it Australia’s first comic film.”

The National Film and Sound Archive wants to hear from anyone who may have information about the man in the film, or the location.

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It is often assumed that to win one of the high-profile art prizes offered in Australia, you have to be a well-established artist – or at least an up-and-coming professional with a strong foothold in the art world.

The winner of this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize has dashed those expectations.

Scott Bycroft is a teacher at the Clontarf Aboriginal College in Perth, an institute renowned for its sports program.

The 37-year-old teaches art and the humanities and is highly committed to his students and to Indigenous education.

He has a background in visual arts, but he only started taking photographs seriously a couple of years ago. He is entirely self-taught.

“I was very surprised to be selected as a finalist,” Mr Bycroft said.

“I just about fell off my chair.

“But it’s good to see that spontaneity has its place in photography. I guess a lot of the world’s most compelling images are spontaneous.”

Mr Bycroft won the $25,000 prize with a compelling image of one of his students, Zareth Long, taken on impulse at a school swimming carnival.

The young man did not pose for the picture, but simply gazed into the lens long enough for Mr Bycroft to snap the winning shot, before turning back to watch the races.

“I sort of recognised a bit of a photographic opportunity I suppose,” Mr Bycroft said.

“I often carry my camera around, photographing the kids here for purposes at school, and he was in that pose and it just sort of transpired organically.”

Dr Chris Chapman is a curator at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra and was on the judging panel.

He says the black and white image of Zareth Long is emblematic of the more classical, head and shoulders portraiture that dominated the art form before the advent of digital photography.

But it is the strength and power of the subject’s gaze, as well as the technical mastery and composition of the piece, that won over the judges.

“The photograph has a fantastic power, it has terrific clarity as an image,” Dr Chapman said.

Coming of age

It is the third year the competition has been run by Canberra’s National Portrait Gallery.

Director Andrew Sayers says it has come of age this year.

“The diversity and the quality and the technical skill is quite remarkable in this year’s exhibition,” he said.

There were over 1,000 entries from both professional and aspiring photographers.

They have been whittled down to 48 finalists, whose work will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery, before the free exhibition tours to several regional galleries around Australia.

“The diversity, quality and technical skill is quite remarkable in this year’s exhibition,” Mr Sayers said.

There is a noticeable lack of famous faces among the images.

While the images themselves are technically refined, the faces captured are unpolished and refreshingly real.

Democratic art

Photographic portraiture has experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, something the gallery is capitalising on with strong visitor numbers.

In an age when almost anyone can pick up a camera and make art or tell stories, the art form is democratic and this competition represents a level playing field among the swathe of premier art prizes offered by galleries around the nation.

The stories behind the subjects are often as intimate as the images themselves.

There is the image of a woman and her daughter, standing defiant at the verge of their Victorian property that was spared the devastation of bushfire.

Another gripping image is of a man in a squat in inner-city Melbourne, slumped in a walking frame so only the top of his head is visible to the lens.

The 65-year-old is surrounded by the detritus of his temporary living space, the brightly graffitied walls behind him a sharp contrast to his shadowy form.

The photographer, Hannah Robinson, befriended the group of squatters who lived in an abandoned building near her house and took the picture just as she turned to leave one day.

This image, as much as any other in the exhibition, exemplifies why portraiture, particularly paired with the immediacy and realism of photography, remains so popular.

It makes the stranger familiar.

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Children and pets are a perfect recipe for fun. If you have any doubts, just watch one of those funny home video shows. The best of the clips feature children and animals.

I am not in any way endorsing dangerous practices. Do not ever leave a child unattended with a pet. As long as there is adequate supervision, children and pets are perfect together.

When taking photographs of children you should probably try to get candid shots. Often children will become shy when there is a camera around. If you take your time and just keep snapping away, even the shyest child will forget your camera and begin to play naturally.

You will be amazed at the pictures you can get. The best thing is that every time you view those photos you will be reminded of that wonderful day spent with the children and their pets. The photos will give the children memories of a fun day, too.

She is quite the photographer. If an orang-utan can take some good photos, so can anyone.

They have cameras that can be mounted to helmets or bike handles. I think they can be adapted to be mounted on most things.

My idea is to mount one of these cameras to my dog’s collar. He has some interesting perspectives on things and it would be fun to see his view.

They have special harnesses to mount cameras on dolphins. I think it is a military idea but it inspires me to think of the amount of information we could get from a dolphin in the wild.

Imagine if we could see, through the lens, what animals think. It would be interesting to watch footage from a cat’s eye view. The cat is a secretive beast. She sits at home in front of the fire, looking relaxed, bored even, and yet the cat is the greatest threat to native birds and small mammals.

It would be interesting to spy on the cat as she shows her true nature.

Another interesting view would be from the horse’s view as he is made to take a jump. I would not like to have to jump the heights my horse seems to enjoy. I would love to see the jump as he sees it.

They say horses see everyone as big as they are themselves. It is a shame they do not yet have a cameras that allows us to see what our pets see, in their own words, so to speak.

In the meantime, I hope they publish more pictures taken from an animal’s point of view. They are fascinating to see.

A Camera and an Eye, Both One of a Kind

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

FORGET what your parents told you: money does grow on trees. Well, at least for the street photographers who work the crowds around the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, it does. With digital cameras and ink-jet printers powered by car batteries, they churn out images at about $10 a pop.

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Polaroid Photographer

Louis Mendes

VISION Mr. Mendes often creates double exposures. 

Arrivistes, as far as Louis Mendes is concerned. Where is the skill in setting a camera to “automatic” and pushing a button? Where is the permanence in a shot printed with no-name ink on no-name paper? Where is the craft?

In his hands. Mr. Mendes works the same crowds — and parades, graduations and concerts — cradling like a piece of sculpture a vintage Speed Graphic camera outfitted with two flash units and a Polaroid back.

That’s right, instant film, a phrase that sounds almost as dated as “electric typewriter.” In an age when digital photography offers instant gratification and cameras come in most phones, who would have thought a decent living could be had taking pictures with a vanishing technology?

Mr. Mendes does, and well enough to do it full time. He can sometimes charge as much as $20 for a portrait, depending on the location.

“I’m the only one with this camera,” he said one afternoon last week as the sun set and the wind whipped through the streets. “This is about a moment for nostalgia. People see these cameras in movies, but they’ve never seen one in person. But when they see this, they go: ‘Ooh. Ahh. Wow.’ ”

As if on cue, a young man who had just taken a picture of his friends with a tiny digital camera looked longingly at Mr. Mendes’s rig the way an econobox owner might swoon over a vintage Benz.

“I get that a lot,” Mr. Mendes said. “I really don’t even have to talk to get customers.”

He had started the afternoon outside Dean & Deluca on 49th Street: “Picture with the tree? Picture with the tree?” Maureen Behnke, visiting from New Jersey with her children, took him up on it. He posed them, shot the frame, pulled the film from the camera and tucked it under his arm. As they waited, he offered tips on what to do in the area.

“It was about a moment,” she said of her decision to be photographed. “I told my son he would never be this little again. In 20 years, he’ll be an adult.”

“And you’ll have a classic,” Mr. Mendes said as he handed her back the 2-by-3-inch photo in a holiday frame.

Suitably suave at 70, he has been doing this for almost 40 years now. He is nothing if not stylish, decked out in a red turtleneck, gray blazer and long black leather coat. As always, he sports a black hat whose left brim is clipped up with — what else? — a pin shaped like a Speed Graphic. A fan on his Facebook group called him “Shaft with a camera.”

If you have been at any parade or major event in New York — or the Super Bowl or the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans — you have seen Mr. Mendes. You might even have had him snap your portrait. Though at this time of year he does straightforward images with the tree in the background, he has also specialized in double exposures in which the subject appears twice, sometimes in different outfits or different seasons.

Yes, he knows Photoshop can let a novice achieve a similar effect. But that’s cheating.

“I can do it on the spot,” he said. “You don’t need a lot of stuff to make a shot. You don’t need lights and tripods. Just look at your subject, look at the light and shoot. You don’t need to take a thousand pictures to get a good picture. You need one good picture. One shot.”

As for those other guys selling pictures on the street, he pays them no mind. Competition, they are not. Some of them don’t even take a single shot; like barkers working for a photographer, they instead weave through the crowds holding out a sample 8-by-10 to lure customers. Frankly, some of them look like their only photo experience was at Central Booking.

“They’re not really photographers, more like picture hustlers,” he said of the shooters who hire the barkers. “They just push a button. They don’t know aperture priority from shutter priority. This, this is me priority. All manual. I set it.”

Mr. Mendes plans to work the Rockefeller tree until Jan. 7, when it is scheduled to be taken down and turned to mulch. Then he will return to the sidewalk outside BH Photo or Adorama Camera. Taking pictures of people who already own cameras makes perfect sense to him, the guy with instant film and a classic rig in a sea of digital snappers.

“Most photographers don’t have a good picture of themselves,” he explained. “They think nobody can take as good a picture as they can. So, I prove them wrong. There’s good money there.”

If you look closely at a photograph, you should be able to see what the photographer is trying to show.

When you set up your own photographs, do you have the viewer of the photograph in mind?

You should try to imagine what your photograph is going to say to the viewer.

It is a good habit to view the scene from different angles and perspectives to see if you can convey a thought or concept to the viewer. It makes your photographs more interseting. You go from just being a taker of snapshots to becoming a real photographer. It also makes your photographs more intereting.

It is a great feeling to have friends and family rushing to view your latest compositions.