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Accuracy of images

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Vivienne14

Vivienne14

Kentish Brummie Moderator
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We’re all familiar with written reports containing inaccurate information. It happens with visual material too. Not only do labels appear incorrectly, as revealed in a recent discussion about a Lichfield Street vs Villa Road image. But the popular colouring of postcards in the early 1900s is another example. In the simple example below, the postcard shows the exact same image; one B&W the other colourised. But look at the cattle. There are less black/darker cattle in the colour image. Viv
DC4FDDCC-05ED-44DB-8EF0-44E4FA0D9DCB.jpegFFC917E7-E550-48B0-ABD1-119B9E979133.jpeg
 
If you upload an image to Ancestry, you are invited to colourise it. I certainly don't. But photography has some interesting tricks. Most people prefer a portrait of themselves flipped left to right rather than as the camera sees them, as we are familiar with our left to right apparent image in the mirror. With film you simply invert the negative when you print.

With the cattle show you could rephotograph the top image them burn some of the pale cattle in to make them darker or dodge some of the dark ones to make them lighter. Bits of card on sticks are used for this or the photographers hands. The final print is an interpretation of the negative.

Bill Brandt was the master making the gable end sooty black by burning it in and losing the features and letting light reflect from the cobblestones. His famous picture of The Snicket Halifax demonstrates this.
 
mikejee said:
Fine as an "arty " thing, but useless if you are interested in the area. That is not to say the photo is not impressive as a work of art
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Yes, these are complex issues. As is what we might identify as the original. Brandt would take a whole series of pictures then select his image for a work print which he could print in different ways. His 'documentary' photography was seldom what it seemed.
 
Certainly I can appreciate the expertise necessary to achieve that result, which would now be obtained by pressing a few buttons. He is manipulating the image to give a result that pleases him, but could be very different than the truth (certainly the truth as others see it). Nothing wrong with that in its place, but that is not what I am looking for if I search for a photograph of a place or building. Of course the photographic process is liable , on some occasions, to give a false image. I realise that . Older photos on orthochromatic films show reds as black. I assume very old plate photos are the same. But this is not deliberate.
 
mikejee said:
Certainly I can appreciate the expertise necessary to achieve that result, which would now be obtained by pressing a few buttons. He is manipulating the image to give a result that pleases him, but could be very different than the truth (certainly the truth as others see it). Nothing wrong with that in its place, but that is not what I am looking for if I search for a photograph of a place or building. Of course the photographic process is liable , on some occasions, to give a false image. I realise that . Older photos on orthochromatic films show reds as black. I assume very old plate photos are the same. But this is not deliberate.
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I mostly agree as here we often want to use a photograph as a source of information. But 'truth' in photography isn't unvarnished. Often people dress a certain way, the photographer chooses what is excluded. There are many interesting pictures on this site which are posed, perhaps directed by the photographer. Brandt went further, he asked his family and friends to dress up for photographs. Posing as a grand lady or maid. In the same way that contemporary photographers might employ a model. He was influenced by surrealism. Photography might be used for surveillance or identification as in the police mug shots that appear in a thread.
 
As far as photographs portrayed on BHF is concerned then most are obvious portrayals. Where. I suspect most of us here find irritating, is when locations are incorrectly described.
 
My personal view of this has been for quite some time now is to get the concept of historical fact out of (my) your head.

Irrespective of if it’s a journal, document, photograph, personal memory or oral story, it just how some individuals saw the world at the time, and how they wanted to tell that story.

We all experience events and the world differently. You only have to listen to people talking about last night’s football match, political opinion, or religion etc to hear this.

I often hear people bickering about the past as they have allegedly research it, clinging on tightly to their source or reference material, their rare and well-thumbed documents. All they are doing is building a body of knowledge and quoting so called historical fact verbatim as a way of separating themselves from the other. Attempting to close the discussion down like this is adding nothing to their understanding of the past.

The past should be understandable by everyone, not just a few academics or historians.

If we can then all, academics, historians and everyday people take part in the discussion of the way things were and how we lived, that to me would be a real triumph of human reason and learning.
 
I posted this old postcard pic in 2018 and the closer I look at it around the high jumper I think they may have faked the photo.
oldMohawk said:
A pic from a postcard sent from Birmingham on 26 July 1914.
It is sportsday at an unnamed Birmingham Girls School and the photographer did well to catch a girl midway through a high jump. She appears to be wearing normal school clothes, and above her I can see her plaits with ribbons and her arms stretched out in front.
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HighJump1914.jpg
 
oldMohawk said:
I posted this old postcard pic in 2018 and the closer I look at it around the high jumper I think they may have faked the photo.

View attachment 175897
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I think you would need to get the jumper to take a series of jumps so you could freeze her movement at the right position having set the shutter speed and aperture to suit the fastest film you could obtain on a sunny day. So essentially the photo would be rehearsed. The French photographer Jean-Henri Lartigue th-3146114146.jpegphotographed his cousin Biconade (little deer) in flight with plate camera in 1905. It was her party trick and they rehearsed together. So essentially these are set-ups. He took loads of pictures too.
 
There must be some keen photographers of yesteryear on the forum. The year is 1914.

Would there be a problem of taking a picture of a subject that is moving ? I remember taking pictures of the RAC Rally in Sutton Park in the 1970s. If I kept the camera still the speed of the car made made the image of the car slightly blurred, while the background is in focus. However when you moved the camera, following the car, the subject was much more in focus while the background became blurred.

Here the girl would not be moving very fast, but given the camera available in 1914 would all the picture be in focus ?
 
I think it could be done with practice by a press photographer of the time. Such people tend to be technically skilled, determined and well equipped with lots of film or plates.

Any odd shadows might be explained by flash powder which gives a short burst of light? Photomontage is another possibility. Photograph the girl and the background separately then put the images together in the darkroom. Rephotograph the result. He could have taken the background at sports day, then done the jumper separately? But I think this is a set-up genuine photograph, just not sports day documentary.
 
The line looks over a metre high and even teenagers today would find it difficult to jump feet forward. The background seems to show under her left elbow. If she was rising or moving horizontally her pigtails would not be positioned as shown. Maybe her legs are tucked under her and she is moving downwards and about to crash onto the line ... it is an interesting and charming photo ..

I often look closely at the people in the old photos and even started a thread about it. If your computing device is up to it have a look. There was some discussion about whether the pic in post #41 was faked .... ;)
oldMohawk said:
See some of the folk who brought the old street pics alive by just being in them ... click the icon to choose any one of 100 pics when a PDF file opens in your default browser.
My Favourites
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Looks ‘doctored’ to me. There’s no way you’d jump so high and in that position wearing a gym slip. I think the rope looks too thin too. And would her hair plaits really be so vertical ? Viv.
 
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I was forgetting that photographic postcards were a special thing, they tend to be quirky, charming and appealing. And photomontage was there from the early days of photography.
 
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