June 10, 2004

faux gâteau

I’ve run across some interesting photographs in the past day or two:

  1. Color photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii who created them by shooting three separate glass plates of the same scene through red, green, and blue filters, and then projecting the composites through a magic lantern. They’ve now been digitally composited and are on exhibition at the U.S. Library of Congress. [via reflections in d minor]
  2. Bee Flowers, a Russian photographer living in the U.S, has been taking bracketed photos and then compositing them in Photoshop while filtering different areas of the negatives. He calls them ambient photographs. [via Richard Friedman during a lunchtime conversation and Google]

[Addendum: Sorry about the gender confusion. Bee is a he not a she.]

Posted by jim at June 10, 2004 01:31 PM | TrackBack
Comments

the Prokudin-Gorskii pictures are fabulous. thanks for sharing.

Posted by: etaoin on June 10, 2004 04:07 PM

Now I always thought Bee Flowers was a she, but, if you read his autobiography, she's a he. How about that. I guess I just ASSUMED "Bee" was short for "Bea". Zoing! Its like coming home and finding the whole house has been painted a new color!

HIS Bio

Sorry for the confusion, Uncle.

Posted by: Richard Friedman on June 10, 2004 07:10 PM

I was just thinking of the Prokudin-Gorskii pictures yesterday, and wondering where I'd put the link. Thanks for bringing them up ;)

As for the Bee Flowers photos... I don't really get it.

Posted by: Justin on June 12, 2004 06:19 PM

Justin: oh, I don't know. Some of the old clocks, phones, and wall textures ones are kind of nice, don't you think?

Posted by: jim on June 12, 2004 06:46 PM

I'm not saying the pictures are unpleasing, I just mean I don't understand your description of the concept (nor did I find the page where he explains it)

Posted by: Justin on June 16, 2004 01:19 PM

Sorry, Justin. He took three or more photos of the same scene but exposed them using different f-stops. Then he combined the photos in Photoshop, each as a different layer, and compositing them in such a way that the single, resulting picture uses different sections of an underlying photo. Sort of like burning in areas, when making a paper photo on an enlarger, by covering parts of the paper when exposing it. Basically different parts of the photo have been exposed differently. Hope this makes sense.

Posted by: jim on June 16, 2004 01:38 PM
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