Monday, June 22, 2009

Color Photos Of Almost Hundred Years Ago

Look at this picture. Does it seem natural for the time when it was taken (1915)? I'm sure most of you will say that it was photoshopped and fake. Well no, it's a real photo taken by the Russian photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.

His process used a camera that took a series of three monochrome pictures in sequence, each through a different coloured filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly coloured light, it was possible to reconstruct the original colour scene.


Any stray movement within the camera's field of view showed up in the prints as multiple "ghosted" images, since the red, green and blue images were taken of the subject at slightly different times (from one to three seconds). For example, look at the kid in the bottom of the picture on the left. It’s well known, that children move a lot, that’s why it was not easy working with them.