steve kessel Posted May 23, 2007 Share #1 Posted May 23, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) A few interesting shots here: The dawn of colour | Arts | Guardian Unlimited Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted May 23, 2007 Posted May 23, 2007 Hi steve kessel, Take a look here early colour photos. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
elansprint72 Posted May 23, 2007 Share #2 Posted May 23, 2007 And in today's Independent: Timeless exposure: 100-year-old colour photos discovered in attic - Independent Online Edition > Americas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted May 23, 2007 Share #3 Posted May 23, 2007 The recent series on BBC4 about Albert Kahn and his colour photographs has been facinating. Some really nice autochromes and perhaps more importantly some very well composed photographs from either side of the first world war. When I lived in Paris I used to take the metro to the end of line 10 and then get a bus to work. Coming out of the metro station at Boulogne there is a sign pointing to the Albert Kahn museum. Like an idiot I never bothered to go, I had no idea of his significance in the world of photography. One for next time perhaps. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve kessel Posted May 23, 2007 Author Share #4 Posted May 23, 2007 Being pretty much a newcomer to the subject, what I find amazing about these photos and the Albert Kahn series on BBC4 is the totally unexpected subtlety of the colour (compared with later colour film of the 30's?), and, in may cases what I see as their artistic merit. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted May 23, 2007 Share #5 Posted May 23, 2007 Steve, I know what you mean. I'm guessing it's a result of the autochrome process. Certainly the pastel colours it gives are very attractive. I had a quick look to see if there was anyone producing a Photoshop plug-in to simulate the effect. I found a couple of descriptions of actions, but that was all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
samwells Posted May 23, 2007 Share #6 Posted May 23, 2007 Agreed on the wonderful subtlety of the autochrome palette - especially Kahn's. Back in 2003 , Iford produced a calendar of Lumiere autochromes...the colours there seemed less pastel, but that may have been the reproduction process. Odd how, over the years, colour photography has grasped more and more saturated hues...I do recall that when I - as a teenager - first started taking colour shots, the colours were more restrained (eg Adox, or Agfa). Equally, German newsreels in the early days of colour film stock had a pleasantly desaturated look. I suspect that more recent trends to vivid colour are perhaps a result of print requirements from 'lo-res' reproduction (newspapers etc). Sam Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted May 23, 2007 Share #7 Posted May 23, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) And there's also the fact that the Kahn photographs are excellent photographs in their own right, regardless of the process used. Even if they had been made using modern materials they world still be worth looking at. There's more to these images than just the novelty of seeing colour from the begining of the 20th century. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
samwells Posted May 23, 2007 Share #8 Posted May 23, 2007 Steve - absolutely...they stand the true test in that the composition sticks in the mind - I recall particularly the one of the French soldier taking a lunchbreak in a lonely village square, fr'instance. Sam Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert_parker Posted May 23, 2007 Share #9 Posted May 23, 2007 The Autochrome shots were particularly interesting and the range of colour was surprising - all done with potato starch - I agree with Steve about the compositions - it shows that a good documentary photograph of people and how they lived will always be interesting, event to future generations Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
elansprint72 Posted May 23, 2007 Share #10 Posted May 23, 2007 eeee.... that colour photography, it'll never catch on. One thing that I only learned from a TV programme only last week (having only ever seen WW1 B&W photos); the French uniforms really were bright blue. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted May 23, 2007 Share #11 Posted May 23, 2007 Composition is everything in a photograph. The medium on which the photograph is recorded is nothing, IMHO. There are far too many these days who consider the medium above the photograph, to their own, and everyone else's, detriment. A good photo is a good photo. Full stop. Give me potato starch over nothing any day of the week. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted May 23, 2007 Share #12 Posted May 23, 2007 Photoshop plug-in to simulate the effect. I found a couple of descriptions of actions, but that was all....... playing around with the autochrome look for about a year now, haven't got far, but I do understand what I have to do. The main problem is the noise/grain...........in digital it is there is very little change in the hue of each speck (noise) in autochrome( grain) there can be major differences. So the trick is how to get the noise to float on top the other colours without looking like separate layers from one another. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve kessel Posted May 23, 2007 Author Share #13 Posted May 23, 2007 I think what struck me first about the early autochromes was how rich and yet muted (the grain?) the colours are. On reflection it seems that the subject, often people and centred, is richly coloured (eg exotic clothing) and the backgrounds are hazy, often lacking in detail (landscapes, obvious example being desert) and it's this (understated) combination that is so alluring, to my eyes anyway. To pick up on another thread, it seems that print media like newspapers now hold more and more definition, like matt versions of Sunday supplements, a combination of paper and ink technology I guess. There's something about the monitor (backlit) now being the medium other media aspire to, hence the craving for saturation. So good luck in your endeavours imants, you could be bucking the trend! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted May 23, 2007 Share #14 Posted May 23, 2007 Agreed on the wonderful subtlety of the autochrome palette - especially Kahn's. Back in 2003 , Iford produced a calendar of Lumiere autochromes...the colours there seemed less pastel, but that may have been the reproduction process. Odd how, over the years, colour photography has grasped more and more saturated hues...I do recall that when I - as a teenager - first started taking colour shots, the colours were more restrained (eg Adox, or Agfa). Equally, German newsreels in the early days of colour film stock had a pleasantly desaturated look. I suspect that more recent trends to vivid colour are perhaps a result of print requirements from 'lo-res' reproduction (newspapers etc). Sam The Autochrome process uses additive color. That causes the unique look. The additive process is great for transmitted light but not very good for reflective light. (In transmitted light, when you combine red, green, and blue light you get white. With reflected light when you combine red, green, and blue dyes or pigments, you get neutral density - gray or black. So the Lumiere process had to use very impure dyes for it to work at all. Additionally, we have no idea how much these images have faded over time. I just came to this site so I apologize if this has been covered but I've alway's found the Czar's photographer to be amazing: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ One of my college instructors for color photography was Robert Bagby who was a commercial photographer who shot color using the simultaneous three shot camera (beam splitters) in the 1920s and 30s. Mr. Bagby was very big time for his day and regaled us with stories. He photographed an ad of a large dinner party inside a ship for Grace Lines. They had hundreds of models and he lit the scene using over 100 flashbulbs and miles of wires. (Blue bulbs outside coming through the portholes and windows.) He had everyone pose and only took one shot. He said that his fee during the depression was around $4000 for that shot and the models cost thousands more. The image was used for years. Another assignment was taking a family around the world to document the story of rubber from trees to tires in color for Goodyear (I believe.) Things like the dad pointing out to the kids different steps. Those kind of assignments couldn't be given to too many photographers as not very many were competant in color nor could be trusted wiht large productions. He printed the separation negatives using the carbro process and later also using dye transfer. (He was my instructor for dye transfer.) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted May 23, 2007 Share #15 Posted May 23, 2007 Yea the Tsars photographer had amazing opportunities, own darkroom on a train etc, wonderfull results, love this suff along with Robert Bergman's photos , he captured some of that mood in his stuff but in a different manner http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/spotlight/may04/bergman.html My bet is that the fovean sensor on the Sigma's will be the answer, so I await for the DP1, the DSLR are too big and a waste of money on a few experiments. I have downloaded some raw files and tried stuff out but the photos not taken the way I wanted. The noise at high isos will not be a bother, so that camera along with games in Smart Object layers that contains RAW files may be a way Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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