quote: The color photo was invented in 1903 by the Lumiere brothers, and the French army was the only one taking color photos during the course of the war.
I'm intrigued by the little fences built around the graves in the little church cemetery in that one picture. Never seen that for individual graves before, only on "family plots."
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I'm intrigued by the one with all the bullet holes in the train. Atleast I think they are bullet holes.
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Wow. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for my mind to comprehend that those images come from a time that is always represented in black and white.
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That's really amazingly good quality for Great War photography. Granted they aren't exactly battle scenes, but still, you'd expect them to be grainier.
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Wow. Those are absolutely extraordinary. As Geoff's pointed out, it's remarkably difficult for me to look at those pictures without somehow assuming that they're of contemporaries; I've always thought of the period between 1890 and 1925 as being in black and white. Before that, during the civil war, it's sepia. After that, it's Technicolor. Prior to the civil war, it's etchings and then, going back further, hand paintings and tapestries. And as much as I know they didn't, I'll always kind of envision the ancient Egyptians walking sideways.
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I agree with all the comments about how this totally throws off your perspective of the time period. When I first saw them I thought that they were awesome but I couldn't place my finger on why they were so cool. I realize it is just because they don't fit into the catagory of WWI photographs. They are outside of what everyone would expect when searching for pictures of that time.
Again I just want to say... Awesome.
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Boon
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I showed them to my husband and he said, "Colorized."
So I looked to see when color photography was invented. Turns out, there's some contention over who invented it and when, but it WAS possible during this era.
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Well, if these have been altered, which I hope they haven't because they are too cool to be fake, who ever did it did a VERY good job! My vote is that they are authentic for no reason other than I want to believe that they are.
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The last one of the church made me sad. Such beautiful architecture destroyed.
Otherwise *wow*. The train trestle threw me in one of the pictures because it looks modern, but the construction of those kind of train trestles hasn't changed much since the inception of the big railroads. They still use similar rivets, but I'm sure construction took much much longer back then, without a lot of power machinery.
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They have the look but they are almost too good. I’m very suspicious. The biggest thing being that you wouldn’t think that the first color photos would be so vivid. Guess I would have thought more blur or something. Pretty neat though.
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Blur has to do with movement on the part of the subject of the picture, or the movement of the camera. Also contributing are available lighting and film speed. Lots o' factors.
AJ, when I saw the destroyed buildings, I thought, "And all this happened again, in a second world war, soon after."
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I was just checking out the site linked by Idemosthenes. I had no idea so many children fought and died in armies in WWI. And not just the German Army.
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I really liked the one showing the whole row of foundations....adn the ones of the soldiers. It was cool to see what the uniforms realy looked like back then, colors and all.
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The second-to-last one, with the wrecked building sort of leaning, really spooked me. It brought back those post 911 photos of the twin tower skeleton.
Even if they are Photoshopped, I agree that they are incredible anyway, and bring a certain reality to that time period that I have never felt. When I think of war, the sun is never shining, you know?
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Some of them seem kind of surreal the way the subjects are in such clear focus while the background is fuzzy. Like the picture of the 3 children standing in front of a decimated building near the end.
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quote: Wow. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for my mind to comprehend that those images come from a time that is always represented in black and white.
This has challenged my faith in Calvin's Dad. I thought the black and white WWI photos were color photos of a Black and White era.
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zgater, older lenses had less depth of field or focus than modern ones do, resulting in what you describe. The effect was hard on moviemakers, who had to plan around it.
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I'm having the same problem as Geoff-- I see the pictures, but my mind doesn't seem to be able to register them as coming from the First World War.
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FAKE! FAKE!! FAKE!!! Everybody knows the world was black&white back then. So there wouldn't have been any color to take a color photograph of. These "photo"s were obviously photoshopped and colorized.
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The link doesn't work anymore. I wanted to show them to my history teacher tomorrow, but it just comes up with '404 Not Found." Does it still work for anyone else?
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Des - I didn't see the original link, but I found these pics uploaded onto another forum. I assume they are the same, if not similar?
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It seems that some are actually coloured photos (although coloured at the time, not now) and others are real colour photos.
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