Wonderful !
Wonder how many of these historical remains are still present in Russia? Would love to visit the country once.
Russia in color, a century ago
121–130 of 196 posts
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#122Can any one post a link to the equipment details - design/description, anything? Thanks.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#123Strangely enough most of the photos now would not be considered those of Russia, but would be other distinct countries.
Yup - the series is titled "Travels in the Russian Empire", and it really was a multinational empire back then.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#124One question - was the artist himself capable of reassembling the monochrome frames into a color picture, or did he just take the pictures and stick them in an archive until someone could develop them properly?
EDIT: Answered my own question - apparently, the slides were originally intended to be projected together (with differently-colored lights) onto a wall, as color prints were too expensive.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not 'just' the work of Photoshop tho. There is a link to ones closer to the original in this discussion thread, and those are still extremely impressive. All in all, I stand by my statement. These are accurate depictions of the color at that time, and as ludicrous as it seems - my brain is blown away that there was so much color. I know obviously there was - but years and years of my visual representation of tha…
my brain is blown away that there was so much color -These image captures are 3 layer BW stills, the color is from a secondary process. Its a logic thing. The colour you are seeing is from photoshop[1,2,3]. Its about as 'real' as the latest issue of XYZ magazine's cover art.[4] That's not to in any way disparage it, but the reason they look "contemporary" is because of the way the images have been post-processed in p…
I'm not really sure what the point of your assertions is. I think that everyone here understands that they did not have the technology 100 years ago to produce prints, transparencies, or projections that look this good. A seeming insinuation of what you are claiming is that we are looking at is a fabrication, rather than an accurate representation of a prior reality. That insinuation, if present, would seem to be groundless. What's amazing is that they had the technology and wherewithal 100 years ago to preserve the data that would let us accurately see today through a window looking 100 years into the past. Or at least as much so as any typical camera today gives us an accurate window into the recent past.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of smiling varies a lot between cultures, you can't correlate smiling with levels of happiness. Russians are known for not being big on smiling http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/why-russians-are-not-s... . From that article: >> There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”
There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity” I'd read this, and spent a couple weeks in Russia last fall, and noticed the lack of smiling a lot when I was there. The thing that struck me about that mindset, and particularly that phrase (and others like it) is that it presumes the person looking at me knows if I have a reason to smile/laugh or not. There's no doubt a lot of l…
> To presume someone is stupid if you see them laughing is certain a cultural thing. Here (US) we'd probably just assume they were happy.
But on the flip side, a lot of people in the U.S. would assume someone is sad or angry if they are not smiling. There are examples in comments here.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think smiling for a photograph must be some sort of social training that humans either take to or don't. I, for example, still find it very difficult and unnatural to smile for photographs unless I am already smiling about something else and the picture is just a candid moment caught at that time. I would imagine that this old picture taking process (3 separate pictures with different filters each time) took quite…
Some of the pictures would have been impossible if the camera wasn't automatically swapping the filters very quickly. You can actually see the distortion is things moved around in the images and the colors separated, and there's even a sense of how fast they were moving. It seems to me that the pictures were taken in rapid succession indeed.
Quoth Wikipedia: "The exposure time of the frames is likely to have varied, even if the developed negatives were later on similar glass plates. In a letter to Leo Tolstoy requesting a photo session, Prokudin-Gorsky described each photo as taking one to three seconds, but, when recollecting his time with Tolstoy, he described a six-second exposure on a sunny day. Blaise Agüera y Arcas estimated the exposure of a 1909 photo taken in broad daylight to have had combined exposures of over a minute, using the movement of the moon as comparison."
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#128No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?
Two reasons:
1. Smiling for a camera is something you do because you want to be remembered that way (happy) -- it is like positive propaganda of yourself via media. Now, figuring out a way to spread a positive image of yourself via the photographic medium is actually a culturally sophisticated trick that we learn by imitating a social habit -- but someone sometime had to invent that habit first. What you are looking at are photos of people taken before that trick was invented (and even if the trick was already invented, the people portrayed wouldn't know about it because they likely had never seen a photo in their life).
2. Even if people knew that they will be remembered more positively if they smile, it took about three minutes to take the kind of photos Prokudin took, and they had to hold absolutely still. It is hard to hold a grin on your face for three minutes without changing it and thus ruining your portrait.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of smiling varies a lot between cultures, you can't correlate smiling with levels of happiness. Russians are known for not being big on smiling http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/why-russians-are-not-s... . From that article: >> There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”
There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity” I'd read this, and spent a couple weeks in Russia last fall, and noticed the lack of smiling a lot when I was there. The thing that struck me about that mindset, and particularly that phrase (and others like it) is that it presumes the person looking at me knows if I have a reason to smile/laugh or not. There's no doubt a lot of l…
The phrase ("смех без причины -- признак дурачины") makes a statement on a cause-less laughter only, and knowing if there's a cause for it hence out of its scope. Speaking culturally, in a country with a "historic code" built around Mongol enslavement, Napoleon struggle (200 years to Borodino was just yestreday, btw) and crushing Hitler (losing around 25 million people, both civil and military), only a slightly off-his-mind person would laugh w/o obvious reasons :) [in spite of a smiley, I'm dead serious]
Many (if not most, actually) not-that-cheerful old men and ladies in the streets of StPetersburg remember Leningrad blockade, for example (like my grandma), and memories like that never make one too eager to smile w/o feeling a real cause for it.
We (Russians) just usually lack a "polite" smile a western-world person is used to; being perceived as honest to others is graded much higher when being formally polite, correct, or tolerant.
So do not panic next time ;)
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
my brain is blown away that there was so much color -These image captures are 3 layer BW stills, the color is from a secondary process. Its a logic thing. The colour you are seeing is from photoshop[1,2,3]. Its about as 'real' as the latest issue of XYZ magazine's cover art.[4] That's not to in any way disparage it, but the reason they look "contemporary" is because of the way the images have been post-processed in p…
I'm not really sure what the point of your assertions is. I think that everyone here understands that they did not have the technology 100 years ago to produce prints, transparencies, or projections that look this good. A seeming insinuation of what you are claiming is that we are looking at is a fabrication, rather than an accurate representation of a prior reality. That insinuation, if present, would seem to be gro…
Understood, I really don't think you know what you are talking about. I am not "asserting," I am describing how black and white images are represented as color. These images are BLACK AND WHITE until they go into PS. Get it? The color of a landscape today or 100 years ago is no different. The fact that you could record monochromatic images in 1912 is not news. In fact, the larger formats favoured in the era (viz, weston, adams, etc) blow away a 16 megapixel digital sensor. The REPRESENTATIONS of colour look contemporary because they ARE they are litereally using 16bit colour spaces and colour gamuts (adobe 1998, prophotoRGB, etc) that are less than 20 years old. The images are not airbrushed but the Colour, saturation, contrast, sharpening (localized contrast) that give these images their "look" are about as "Real" as instagram on your iPhone. In fact, you could put instagram image filters on top of these files, pretty easily. To get that "Retro" look? Ironic, Eh? There is no secret to it. Its just odd that a with so many computer-literate people here there are so many comments that beg-the-question if people understand what they are looking at. There is a simple, genius technique at work here: shoot a BW image with a colour filter. That is not at all high tech, was not even in 1912 (see y/b sky filters, eg). Its very interesting to do some legwork on digital colour if you are unfamiliar with it. The images are, for all intents and purposes, similar to what we are looking at from MARS. Hope this helps. Your tone is slightly misplaced.