you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph⌠in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckinâ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:
that last one is literally a LOOK
yes!
but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:
AND the guy developed color slide processing as well. as a person fairly familiar with modern b/w processing at home, but never EVER stepping into color (negatives or slides) territory, iâd say, BAMF to the highest degree.Â
Here are a few more Prokudin-Gorskiy / Gorskii shots, and a reminder once again that these arenât recently colourised BW images but original colour photos taken about 120 years ago. Many colourised pics donât look this good. Some modern colour pics donât look this good (as I know all too well. âDelete image Y/N? Y!â)
This is Leo Tolstoy, author of âWar and Peaceâ and âAnna Kareninaâ.
Alim Khan, Emir of BukharaâŚ
âŚand his Minister of the Interior.
A Type B-15 steam locomotiveâŚ
Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berriesâŚ
The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya LadogaâŚ
âŚand a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.
Unlike some current selfies ;-> heâs not dominating the image, so hereâs a closer shot.
Nice hatâŚ
When I was a teacher I did a unit about SPG. He developed the tech and convinced tsar Nikolai II to get him a railroad car and cash money so he could document the Russian empire. This is especially surprising since Nikolai was color blind. Then came
He had some issues after the October Revolution since, you know, buddies with the Tsar and eventually settled in Paris, just in time for WWII. It is astounding that his glass plates survived.
At any rate, I taught my students basic photoshop skills and showed how you could take scans of the original plates and put them in separate RGB channels in PS and get color photos. My students seemed to like the exercise. The first year I taught this curriculum, I got in contact with Walt Frankhauser who was responsible for the digital color versions of these photos. I got my students to write questions (if they wanted) and passed them on to WF who answered them.
