Luminous Landscape Forum

Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: vandevanterSH on September 04, 2009, 12:50:11 am

Title: History of Photography
Post by: vandevanterSH on September 04, 2009, 12:50:11 am
This doesn't belong here (there is no "History of Photography section") but this is a link to some incredible color photos taken ~100 years ago in Czarist Russia...This is a project of the Library of Congress...The color photographic technique is quite interesting.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585)

(Please delete thread if this is not appropriate)

Steve
Title: History of Photography
Post by: Wim van Velzen on September 04, 2009, 11:03:22 am
Thanks for the link - some very beautiful work there and amazing colors for the age!
Title: History of Photography
Post by: Misirlou on September 04, 2009, 11:44:59 am
Wow. Newsweek got right on that story. The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.

Great stuff though.
Title: History of Photography
Post by: vandevanterSH on September 04, 2009, 12:19:40 pm
The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.
*****
Yea...several hours after posting, I realized that "Newly Released......" was a mis-statement...however I don't think this interesting collection has been widely publicized.  For those interested in the technique used to capture and then 100 yrs later to digitize these photos, here is a link to the Library of Congress....

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html)

The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed..:>)

Steve
Title: History of Photography
Post by: DarkPenguin on September 04, 2009, 01:21:05 pm
As an aside flickr has a ton of library and museums posting to their flickr commons.  Some amazing stuff there.

www.flickr.com/commons
Title: History of Photography
Post by: vandevanterSH on September 04, 2009, 01:45:52 pm
An aside on the aside :>)....Here is the link to the Library of Congress Photo Collection...about 1.2 million images..

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html)
Title: History of Photography
Post by: Misirlou on September 04, 2009, 04:40:27 pm
Quote from: vandevanterSH
The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.
*****
Yea...several hours after posting, I realized that "Newly Released......" was a mis-statement...however I don't think this interesting collection has been widely publicized.  For those interested in the technique used to capture and then 100 yrs later to digitize these photos, here is a link to the Library of Congress....

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html)

The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed..:>)

Steve

I remember reading up on that photographer when the exhibit first opened. At the time, I wondered if maybe he shot them by dropping a holder with 3 in-line plates through the back of the camera relatively quickly. I think that's how multiple prints of the same portrait snapshot were made before the negative/paper printing processes matured. You'd still have to make separate exposures, but it minimized the movement of the camera that you'd get from pulling and pushing the plates through one at a time in their own holders. If you look at the shots with moving water, it just seems incredible that he could have done three decent exposures in such rapid succession.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't someone here on LL with voluminous knowledge of those old techniques.
Title: History of Photography
Post by: DaFu on September 06, 2009, 10:03:08 am
Quote
The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed.

Somewhere on the LOC site there's a description of the process. He built his own camera that took three filtered exposures at once. He also built a projector to display them for his talks.

Someone had the brilliant idea of using Photoshop/image processing to combine scans of the three negatives and provide us all with these fascinating images.

Dave
Title: History of Photography
Post by: vandevanterSH on September 06, 2009, 11:01:41 am
Quote from: DaFu
Somewhere on the LOC site there's a description of the process. He built his own camera that took three filtered exposures at once. He also built a projector to display them for his talks.

Someone had the brilliant idea of using Photoshop/image processing to combine scans of the three negatives and provide us all with these fascinating images.

Dave

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html)