[Lakka]

I thought I'd post an url for them here. I found alot of inspiring stuff in these.

I dunno what the text says as I'm not russian but they're apparently taken in 1905-- .

They were made using some wierd technique where you had to take a few B/W photos and the combining em somehow getting color. OR what the hell, I know nothing of photography

So the URL:

http://www.museum.ru/museum/1812/Memorial/PG/colorpg_3.html

[Awetopsy]

these are really great.. My guess is something like early film experiments on capturing each color and then taking the printed transparancies and overlaying them on each other to produce a color effect.

The reason I guess this is because of the one with the girl sitting, you can see a couple areas where the green green and red are off indicating the item moved slightly between the green and red shots being taken.

Im completely talking out of my butt however....

[Affected]

awetopsy: you're pretty much right on the money, that's how I've heard they did colour photos before colour film. I guess you just place a blue, red and green filter over the lens to get the corresponding colour "channel" captured on your negative, but either you need a way to make colour prints, or you need to project the pictures with three separate projectors, each with the right colour filter again. That's how I figure it anyway.

edit: since they were able to take pictures of people at all, I guess they must have been able to take the different exposures quite rapidly. Perhaps a three-set of revolving lenses, with a filter already in place on each lens?

[Lakka]

you can see it pretty good here

http://www.museum.ru/museum/1812/Memorial/PG/pic/04845v.jpg

[Mikko K]

It's very interesting how different the typical grayscale shots made the early days of photography look like.

I'd almost think that the world was in grayscale at the time, or desaturated like Saving Private Ryan. The amount of colourful material from the world war times is just almost non existent.

Anyone think the new Brothers in Arms game looks too colourful for a war game? It almost feels unreal, because it has so much saturation to it Yet that's much closer to how stuff looked at the time.

[Capt. Fred]

I know what you mean, seeing those colour photos, its hard not to think they are just people dressed in period clothing. I find it difficult to comprehend that is the real deal, genuine history. Mad that I should be surprised that they had full colour sunsets back then, it just looks too modern!

Really lovely to see. The crowd shot on the hill is amazing!

[Capt. Fred]

Looking further through them. Kind of changes your perception of history, and things like slavery (seeing photo of guys in chains, that may or not have been slaves). It's not some nebulous part of 'history', or a subject within that field of knowledge. That was a daily reality, with the full colour sky above their heads, of people recently profiting massively from regularly abusing millions of other people.

It provides such context, being that the scenarios in those photos aren't part of an alternate reality outside of time without consequences - They show the very things we did shortly before we got to where we are right now, and that's how we got here.

I think it really just goes to show how shallow my perception of history was. Too many historical movies and TV shows removed the obvious reality of the past.

But without complacence, it is heartening to be reminded of how quickly popular morality has advanced. Just imagining what life will be like in 2100 when my cousin's new baby will be very old (given that average life expectancy increases by 5 hours a day).

[Synnical]

I think part of our collective conscious will always associate different types of greyscale photography to certain time periods, regardless what the reality is. It is a odd feeling looking at these as if you were looking through the wrong window in time. There's also absence of the mystique that only our perceived time gap in history can bring, as these photos are very much artifects that chronicles the technology at the time.

Anyway, they are very cool to look at and are very well done as reproductions.

[Affected]

What struck me most was the quality of the pictures. I don't mean how good the colours are, but the overall quality: there's an immense sense of depth in those. Maybe it's just the (I assume) large-format camera used.

edit:
This, for example: http://www.museum.ru/museum/1812/Memorial/PG/pic/03970v.jpg
Then again, it always seemed to me the Russians have always had very strong compositions.

[Drew]

Smaller formats are much more modern.

Was there not a post about pretty much this same thing a year or two (or three) ago? For the pictures I saw previously, there were three cameras combined into one body, and then, as Affected said, filters were placed over the lenses and the shots were taken at the same time. The registration of the three images was a bit off, but it was still convincing. There was no way to print color images. The only way to view them was through projectors, again with filters.

[[Shizo]]

Yeah I posted a link to some of these photos some years ago. But this time it seems they restored and put out a whole lot more! Cool!
By the way, the website is about the war of 1812, I looked at their site map and didn't find the 1905 photos section.. strange.

If I remember correctly, this was a project by some Russian guy with help from Czar Nicholas II to take pics of the vast Russian Empire. Then soon there was revolution and the photographer escaped from Russia with the photos that he had taken. Also on some of the photos you can see a similar medal - probably he gave it out for services to the czar. He went to some really awesome places, east and west. Too bad I can't look up more info right now, they should translated it to English anyway.

[Lakka]

I actually read on a finnish page that "colorphotos 1905 blabla" so I must of gotten it wrong.

He was described as "The Czars photographer" though. They must of gotten some stuff twisted with the date

[joemo]

Here's a Google translation. Edit: sorry, [Shizo] said this already - text removed.

[[Shizo]]