unrealphishMay 15
rail 🦊
If you are interested in photography i seriously recommend you look into the works and life of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

He was a pioneer of color film photography in early 20th century and created some absolute bangers

It feels so weird and out of place to see sharp high-detail color photography and think "damn that looks reasonably modern, maybe a few decades old?" and then you're like "oh shit it's imperial russia" xd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky#Gallery
May 6 at 7:47amWeb
Show threadMimo  (Siph)May 6
@rail these pictures are so beautiful. It's so weird to see pictures from this far back looking so vibrant and real
Show threadMimo  (Siph)May 6
@rail about ten years ago, I was using one of his pictures as a phone wallpaper, but I can’t find it anymore. It was a picture of a wooden boat in a river in a forest, and there were no human subjects
Show threadquinnMay 6

@rail

> Using a railway-car darkroom provided by Emperor Nicholas II, [...]

damn

Show threadMiles  May 6
@rail holy heck!!
Show threadFluxMay 6

@rail It’s kind of funny how often we forget that the world was in as much colour and detail as it is today before the advent of cheap high fidelity colour cameras.

But also that the world entering the 20th century and the one leaving it were so different that in that relatively short time in human or natural history had changed more than any century before it. Russia literally changed 3 times over.

Imagine showing someone who grew up with constant famine in the Great Depression what the Green Revolution would eventually allow for in their likely lifespan.

Show threadColinMay 6
@rail @hexaitos I remember finding these in like 2010~ and being stunned just like ya say here.
Show threadjiub   May 6
@rail absolutely incredible
Show threadAlice May 15

@rail

oh shit it's imperial russiaexactly, recent /hj

Show threadrail 🦊May 15
@alice not wrong for the past uhhh way too long
Show threadAisling "chilla time abolitionist" FawnMay 15
@rail A funny little consequence of the fact that he had to take each channel as a separate photograph is that anything moving ends up with an Annihilation-like colorful shimmer. Check out the water in the first picture and the smoke in the third.
Show threadrail 🦊May 15
@aisling edges of human subjects too yeah
Show threadseeprMay 15
@aisling @rail Could one call this rgba shift? Can one deduce the order in which the color channels images were recorded from the images? How to reproduce such an effect in digital images today?
Show threadAisling "chilla time abolitionist" FawnMay 15
@seepr @rail i actually did that intentionally as a kid, id take three photographs of a moving subject, like my brother playing the piano, and extract the red channel from the first, green channel from the second, blue channel from the third, then combine all three additively
Show threadAisling "chilla time abolitionist" FawnMay 15
@rail @seepr for extra fun: id print them out and then view them under color changing rainbow lights and now the subject is moving again
Show threadDavidM_yegMay 15

@rail

Stunning images! Thank you for sharing!

I’m curious if anyone might know what the objects in this fellow’s pockets are?

Show threadphozzyMay 15
@DavidM_yeg @rail It's basically the same thing as an musketeer used to store gunpowder.
Show threadTanyel CakmakMay 15
@rail What a gem of a recommendation! The idea that such vivid, sharp color photography existed over a century ago is genuinely astonishing. Thanks for bringing this to my feed!
Show threadpurple: licenced to sticky plasterMay 17
@rail I love how the pictures of various ‘ethnic’ groups are in locations that don't correspond to the modern nation states, another age, before the hard borders and mass ‘relocations’ of the coming decades