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Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

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Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#101

Post by The_Colonel »

progre wrote: post #76
thaumasiotes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the major thing remaining that makes them look 19th century is that they're all drowning in cloth; lots of thick layers. Aren't they in Oslo?

Most of these looks like early summer photos though. Temperatures likely around 20C.

> early summer

That seems quite specific. How do you tell?

From what I see it's probably not winter (lack of snow), not autumn (lack of leaves on the ground). But that still leaves a pretty long time period with a bigger range of temperatures.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#102

Post by brabel »

pomian wrote: post #95
saalweachter wrote: post #32

> “When he was a young man at Oslo University he fell in love with a lady whom he did not know and with whom he was too bashful to become acquainted,” writes his biographer. “Wishing at least to have a picture of her, he decided that this was possible only by taking a photograph of her himself, without her knowing.” Oh, technology.

So. Which one is she!

There's a pretty, young lady[1] that seems to appear in many of the photos! I was thinking exactly that this was the reason, a teenager in love mischievously taking hidden photos of his love interest, and then just rolling along with it and taking pics everywhere :D

[1] https://www.boredpanda.com/spy-camera-secret-street-photogra...

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#103

Post by tempodox »

Croftengea wrote: post #98
throwaway2331 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this too, until I saw the pictures in the TFA. They literally look exactly the same as people from our times. Now I look at "1800s pictures" on some search engine's images, and they look completely different. I'm gonna guess it's a mix of: doctoring/"touching up," camera, lighting, and cognizant angling/positioning of the people in question. The candid shots look like people I would see on the street. While…

TFA?

“The fucking article”

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#104

Post by kristopolous »

jl6 wrote: post #97

We need to talk about casual acceptance of litter and clutter. Clearly it doesn’t have to be that way.

It's not like they lived in a world of takeaway bags with paper cups and disposable cutlery.

There was a time when you'd return bottles to the manufacturer and they were seen as responsible for what they chose to manufacture.

Somewhere down the line, all of this, 100% of it was placed on the end user - as if the billion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees and control of an international supply chain has no agency whatsoever to make any decisions at all and they exist as mere errand boys of the supposedly all powerful consumer.

None of these things will be fixable until we collectively stop fantasizing that someone paying $1 for a soda has more power in the fundamental decisions of how it's manufactured than the company's board of directors.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#106

Post by jb1991 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #101
progre wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these looks like early summer photos though. Temperatures likely around 20C.

> early summer That seems quite specific. How do you tell? From what I see it's probably not winter (lack of snow), not autumn (lack of leaves on the ground). But that still leaves a pretty long time period with a bigger range of temperatures.

Summers are pretty short in that part of the world.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#107

Post by omk »

kristopolous wrote: post #104
jl6 wrote: post #97

We need to talk about casual acceptance of litter and clutter. Clearly it doesn’t have to be that way.

It's not like they lived in a world of takeaway bags with paper cups and disposable cutlery. There was a time when you'd return bottles to the manufacturer and they were seen as responsible for what they chose to manufacture. Somewhere down the line, all of this, 100% of it was placed on the end user - as if the billion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees and control of an international supply chain ha…

You pose a very valid point and I stand by it. Such an argument is often countered with the cost of rapid progress and providing businesses the autonomy without burdening them with bureaucracy.

Cost is also a factor. These pictures seem to come from an era when there weren't many disposable (cheap) materials found in consumer products. Paper, cloth, glass, metal and wood all could be classified as expensive. One could exchange this scrap with a vendor in exchange for a reasonable amount. Plastics simply don't find a place once separated from the utility they packed. Very little incentive for consumers to take it back even if the manufacturer accepted.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#108

Post by jb1991 »

cmer wrote: post #59

Somewhat unrelated question that I could probably Google, but I figured it's more interesting to hear your take. Why do people on old pictures look like they're from a completely different era? They look like they're from the 1800s. Is it the camera, the clothing or did they actually look slightly different from us? Or perhaps it's just an illusion? Realistically I wouldn't expect humans' appearance to change that mu…

May I offer a guess about you personally? From your question, I’m guessing that you’re fairly young, possibly under 30 years old. I’m only guessing this, because, as people age, they begin to see the similarities instead of the differences when looking at old photos of people. Younger people tend to react the way you do to these kinds of photos.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#110

Post by inglor_cz »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #55
Normille wrote: post #2

Great find. Thanks for posting. I love it when photos from this era occasionally emerge showing people acting naturally. We're so used to seeing the vast majority of Victorian photographs showing dour-faced people sitting or standing stiffly to attention, that it's sometimes difficult to believe they had human emotions, just like us.

Properly exposing the plate—or whatever—took several seconds, and it's way easier to look dour for five seconds than to hold a rictus grin. Source: Among other things, I've sat for a tintype portrait before. https://twitter.com/aaronbrethorst/photo

Tintype is a different technology. By the 1890s, it would have been as obsolete as rotary landline phones are today.

I think the reason is different, because even I, as a kid in the early 1980s, was taken to a photo shop for "official shots", well dressed and told to behave. It was a bit unnatural, yes. People in staged shots are generally a little stiff.

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