Photographic Firsts And A Conspiracy?

S&F
I love looking at very old photo's and these are the OLDEST?

Originally posted by RiverRunsFree
reply to post by phroziac

 

Ha yes, and it's hardly faded in the wash too.

Something that did just occur to me, maybe the first ever photo I posted above is wrong and should be the second.

Maybe this is the oldest ever photo -

The Shroud of Turin

According to the art historian Nicholas Allen the image on the shroud was formed by a photographic technique in the 13th century.[139] Allen maintains that techniques already available before the 14th century—e.g., as described in the Book of Optics, which was at just that time translated from Arabic to Latin—were sufficient to produce primitive photographs, and that people familiar with these techniques would have been able to produce an image as found on the shroud. To demonstrate this, he successfully produced photographic images similar to the shroud using only techniques and materials available at the time the shroud was made.

en.wikipedia.org...

Of course this is not proven as fact but maybe the shroud is a primitive photo, if so, I wonder how many other primitive photos there were (or are) that we don't know about? Imagine if we found a book of primitive photos from the 13th century (circa 750 years old), now that would be cool.
There could be pictures from the 5th, 6th or 7th crusades, signing of the Magna Carta or from the Mongol Empire.

Just to add, Lewis Powell (the Abercrombie model from the 1860's) was a 'participant' in the first ever execution to be photographed, the pictures are available but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post them so to be safe I wont.

That would be an impression.

Originally posted by Ear-Responsible

Originally posted by RiverRunsFree
reply to post by phroziac

 

Ha yes, and it's hardly faded in the wash too.

Something that did just occur to me, maybe the first ever photo I posted above is wrong and should be the second.

Maybe this is the oldest ever photo -

The Shroud of Turin

According to the art historian Nicholas Allen the image on the shroud was formed by a photographic technique in the 13th century.[139] Allen maintains that techniques already available before the 14th century—e.g., as described in the Book of Optics, which was at just that time translated from Arabic to Latin—were sufficient to produce primitive photographs, and that people familiar with these techniques would have been able to produce an image as found on the shroud. To demonstrate this, he successfully produced photographic images similar to the shroud using only techniques and materials available at the time the shroud was made.

en.wikipedia.org...

Of course this is not proven as fact but maybe the shroud is a primitive photo, if so, I wonder how many other primitive photos there were (or are) that we don't know about? Imagine if we found a book of primitive photos from the 13th century (circa 750 years old), now that would be cool.
There could be pictures from the 5th, 6th or 7th crusades, signing of the Magna Carta or from the Mongol Empire.

Just to add, Lewis Powell (the Abercrombie model from the 1860's) was a 'participant' in the first ever execution to be photographed, the pictures are available but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post them so to be safe I wont.

That would be an impression.

That would be an impression.

Yep, and a fake too. To be an impression the cloth would have needed to be touching the face all over, That would mean the cloth was not flat. That means the image should look distorted when the cloth is laid flat as we see it in the image shown, but it doesnt.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
To be an impression the cloth would have needed to be touching the face all over, That would mean the cloth was not flat. That means the image should look distorted when the cloth is laid flat as we see it in the image shown, but it doesnt.

The best explanation for this I've heard was that it was a contact impression with a bas relief sculpture that was naturally more flat than a real human face. They're more common in Orthodox Christian churches. It would be an odd sculpture, more realistic than most, and showing the front and back, but it would also account for lack of natural contouring and the fact that the "image" of the top of his head doesn't continue in a line the way it would if it was one long cloth stretching from heel to toe over the top of a body. So maybe it was created just to make the impression. Long destroyed.

reply to post by II HAL II


no.

reply to post by RiverRunsFree


I wonder if he had to hold his pose for an extended period of time since photo technology at the time required some exposure time before actually taking the picture. This shows that even from early on the government had access to better equipment than the civilian populous.

You ever notice how NO ONE smiles in old photos? They just stare at the camera with no emotion on their face lol.

i still can't get over that Lewis Powell picture, it looks so modern. The only thing that made me realize that it was older were the handcuffs he was wearing. great thread

World's Oldest Color Film (1901 / 1902)

reply to post by RiverRunsFree


alright Im with ya on the conspiracy but with a twist of time travel. maybe Lincoln had to be assasinated???? the guy looks very odd indeed. Out of place. but I guess i havent studied pictures of that time period

Time traveling hipsters killed Lincoln?
Yep that would be a conspiracy alright.

The reason for lack of emotion was the long exposure times.
It was easier to just keep a netural face for 3 or 4 minutes.

I used to be a photographer and got a chance to handle early 1850's glass Daguerrotype photos.
I had to make copies of them.
Most nervous 30 minutes of my life.

If you want really strange look up Victorian death photos.
The ones of children are just creepy.

awesome stuff, if i didn't know better that last shot looks like your typical instagram hipster lol. amazing for 150 year old shot

Since we are talking firsts here, Alphonse Bertillion, as well as being the first to take mugshots, was also the first to see the value, and develop a methodology for photographing scenes of crime...



www.nlm.nih.gov...



foxesinbreeches.tumblr.com...



theshipthatflew.tumblr.com...

Alphonse Bertillon (April 24, 1853 – February 13, 1914) was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals. Before that time, criminals could only be identified based on unreliable eyewitness accounts. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting,[1] but "his other contributions like the mug shot and the systematisation of crime-scene photography remain in place to this day."[2]

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by jazzguy
heres the first military photo.

Thats cool, almost looks like a painting, but you can tell it's not.

Originally posted by pajoly
Thank you for the thread

No problem, I was a little unsure if people would find this interesting but I'm glad some did.

Originally posted by Biliverdin
Too pretty for my taste, I don't like men with girlish noses, but sinny isn't the only one. Lewis attracted hordes of women at the trial. Alexander Gardner took a single photograph of all the other conspirators. Of Lewis he took ten, in various poses, six of which he registered for copyright. He didn't register his photographs of the less photogenic conspirators, but nor did any of the publications want to print them. As Ted Bundy demonstrated, some women find murderers, especially photogenic ones, shall we say, lubricating. A woodcut of one of Gardner's photographs of Powell made the cover of Harper's Weekly. Although Harper's was a political paper, I guess that the decision was made that while Wilkes Booth may have been the brains of the operation, it would be Powell's sex appeal that would increase sales by appealing to the gentler sex not usually inclined towards an interest in political matters.

Nothing much changes

Thanks for the additional information, that's fascinating, you know your stuff. I watched a documentary regarding notorious criminals (mostly murderers) that attract women, sometimes it starts with letters or a pen pal then they meet, then they marry, all while the convict is in prison.... strange.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I love looking at very old photo's and these are the OLDEST?

Me too, I'm not sure why I like old photo's though, maybe it's because their world is so far removed from today's. Thanks.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by VoidHawk
To be an impression the cloth would have needed to be touching the face all over, That would mean the cloth was not flat. That means the image should look distorted when the cloth is laid flat as we see it in the image shown, but it doesnt.

The best explanation for this I've heard was that it was a contact impression with a bas relief sculpture that was naturally more flat than a real human face. They're more common in Orthodox Christian churches. It would be an odd sculpture, more realistic than most, and showing the front and back, but it would also account for lack of natural contouring and the fact that the "image" of the top of his head doesn't continue in a line the way it would if it was one long cloth stretching from heel to toe over the top of a body. So maybe it was created just to make the impression. Long destroyed.

I've never heard that explanation before, like it. The reason I go with the early photo explanation is because, as pointed out already, the shroud doesn't distort like it should when on a 3D face, a photo seems more likely, if that technology was around of course, who knows.

Originally posted by RealSpoke
You ever notice how NO ONE smiles in old photos? They just stare at the camera with no emotion on their face lol.

I had noticed this, I always put it down to them having a harder life than us, ha, until I read mash3d comments below (which makes more sense). Oh and thanks for posting the first color film, I for one enjoyed.

Originally posted by Soulreaper54
i still can't get over that Lewis Powell picture, it looks so modern. The only thing that made me realize that it was older were the handcuffs he was wearing. great thread

I'm with you there. I'm sure if you showed the picture to a guy on the street who didn't know how old it was they would think it was fairly modern.

Originally posted by sd211212
alright Im with ya on the conspiracy but with a twist of time travel. maybe Lincoln had to be assasinated???? the guy looks very odd indeed. Out of place. but I guess i havent studied pictures of that time period

Ha, maybe Lincoln originally lived, in a different time line, and things turned out bad. Send back an assassin to make sure the other conspirators carried out the deed properly.

Originally posted by mash3d
I used to be a photographer and got a chance to handle early 1850's glass Daguerrotype photos.
I had to make copies of them.
Most nervous 30 minutes of my life.
If you want really strange look up Victorian death photos.
The ones of children are just creepy.

Great post, 1850's photo's! thats cool, must have been some experience. I've seen those death photo's, the children look like dolls... found them sad but also interesting how people may have got some comfort from them.

reply to post by RealSpoke


That's because it took like 15 minutes to take a picture. Try smiling for that long, you'd eventually give up and just start staring.

Does anyone remember the word that describes the phenomenon when you see things in images that aren't there (e.g face on Mars) because i swear to Yoda I can see a star destroyer in the second image.

Does anyone else see it?

Cool thread, by the way.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie

I think it's called Pareidolia - en.wikipedia.org...

Here are some more firsts for photography -

1) The first photo to be published on the web, 1992 -

This picture of Les Horribles Cernettes was the first photographic image to be published on the World Wide Web in 1992.

"The Horrible CERN Girls") is an all-female parody pop group, self-labelled "the one and only High Energy Rock Band", founded by employees of CERN which performs at CERN and other HEP related events. Their musical style is often described as doo-wop. The initials of their name, LHC, are the same as those of the Large Hadron Collider which was later built at CERN.

en.wikipedia.org...



2) The first photo from Mars surface, 1976 -

Taken by the Viking 1 lander shortly after it touched down on Mars, this image is the first photograph ever taken from the surface of Mars. It was taken on July 20, 1976. The primary objectives of the Viking mission, which was composed of two spacecraft, were to obtain high-resolution images of the Martian surface, characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface and search for evidence of life on Mars.

www.nasa.gov...



3) The first photos from a battlefield, 1862 -

When Alexander Gardner arrived on the bloody Antietam battlefield in 1862, with his cumbersome photography equipment, he set out to do something that no one had ever done. It was the first time a photographer attempted to document a battlefield before the dead had been cleared away.

(more pictures in the following link)
www.slate.com...



4) The first photo of the moon, 1839 -

John William was born in England and immigrated in the U.S.A. There he became a chemistry professor in the New York University. The silver platinum plate (Daguerreotype print) of the moon was the first of a series that where shot using a telescope.

www.fotoart.gr...

I believe the Shroud of Turin to be the first use of photography we have, following a good amount of evidence it is indeed that. Keeping in mind however, that since the Shroud of Turin is supposedly a composite of two images, the technique must've been used previously in order to perfect it.

reply to post by RiverRunsFree
Thanks very much for posting those shots. Beyond being just interesting studies, I find them a window into a world without the niceties that we take for granted...electricity, radio and TV, manned flight, internal combustion engines, never mind computers and the Net. For moving pictures, I'd recommend Mitchell & Kenyon's "Electric Edwardians". Fascinating!

reply to post by RiverRunsFree


Wow the quality of that last photo is sound. You can even see the hairs on his jumper. I wouldn't get a picture that clear of my phone now and its got a 12mp camera.