San Diego-based photographer Tim Mantoani has an awesome project and book titled “Behind Photographs” that consists of 20×24-inch Polaroid portraits of famous photographers posing with their most iconic photographs. The film costs $200 per shot, and Mantoani has created over 150 of the portraits already since starting the project five years ago.
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Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway recently started a business in which she restores and colorizes old black and white photographs. To show off her skills, she decided to colorize some famous B&W photographs captured throughout history.
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Fatescapes is a series of images by visual artist Pavel Maria Smejkal consisting of iconic photographs with their subjects Photoshopped out of them. The New York Times writes,
[...] Pavel Maria Smejkal goes a step further and forces us to reconsider the veracity of historical images and the photographer’s role by digitally removing the people that made these images resonant. What is left is the scene as it might have looked just minutes before or after the photographer passed by. These images are reminiscent of a time, before Photoshop, when photographs were believed to be a reflection of reality. Mr. Smejkal’s alterations question whether photographs should be viewed as accurate representation.
See if you can recognize each of these famous historical photographs. The answers are at the end of the post.
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“The Catch” is one of the most famous plays in American football history, and Walter Iooss Jr.’s photograph of Dwight Clark leaping into the air is one of the game’s iconic images. Paul Lukas of Uni Watch has published an interesting analysis of the photograph and why it “works”:
I’ve been fascinated by the famous photo of the Catch for years and have always thought it to be the greatest photo ever of NFL action, and possibly the greatest sports photo, period. The photo has always been very visually pleasing to me, so I recently decided to find out why.
Out of curiosity I applied the golden ratio, the rule of thirds, and perspective to the photo, and I was completely blown away by the results. Now I know why this photo has always been so visually stunning to me: Compositionally, it is divine. I’ve prepared a series of exhibits to support my points.
If you aren’t familiar with these two rules of composition, check out this article.
Behind the Gare St. Lazare is one of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s best known photographs, and is frequently cited as an example of his “decisive moment” approach to photography. The photograph was made in 1932, but the oldest known print is dated 1946. That print will be sold at a Christie’s auction on November 11th along with 100 other signed prints, and is expected to fetch up to ~$250,000.
(via Christies via Foto Actualidad)
For every iconic photograph that’s out there, there was likely a number of other photographs taken at the same time that many people probably have never seen. One such photo is Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange — an image that became one of the defining photos of the Great Depression. The woman in the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, had been travelling with her family when their car’s timing chain snapped. After setting up a temporary camp to wait while her husband and two sons went to town for repairs, Dorothea Lange drove up and spent 10 minutes capturing 6 photos.
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Flickr user Alex Eylar created this humorous recreation of Pete Souza’s now-iconic photo of Obama in the Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden raid.
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Pete Souza’s iconic photo of Obama and his national security team in the Situation Room has become extremely well known in the span of a week, so it’s unlikely that any reputable media outlet would dare alter the photo in any way — but that’s exactly what one newspaper did. Orthodox Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung has a policy of never publishing photographs of women, and decided to publish Obama’s situation room photograph with Hillary Clinton and counterterrorism director Audrey Tomason Photoshopped out of the frame.
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The big story around the world this week was the death of Osama bin Laden after a raid of his compound by US Navy SEALs. As a terrific example of how the Internet is transforming the way we view these world events, behind the scenes photos taken at the White House as these events transpired were almost immediately shared on the White House Flickr photostream. One particular photograph (shown above) showing President Obama and his national security team in the Situation Room has been widely published, and may go on to become one of the iconic photographs of Obama’s presidency. It has amassed over two million views in just a couple days, and is reportedly the fastest viewed photo ever on Flickr.
P050111PS-0210 (via TechCrunch)
Redditor and DeviantArt user mygrapefruit took Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph V-J Day in Times Square and colorized it, giving us a glimpse into what the photo might have looked like had Eisenstaedt used color film. She writes,
How I did it: Photoshop CS 5, wacom tablet. Brush tool with Mode set to “Color”. Sometimes I made finer selections in quick mask (press Q) to easily colour an area. I personally find this easy to do, it is only time consuming, especially if you feel the need to research the actual real colours (I found some vintage postcards of times square to figure out the colour of the buildings and some signs). The rest of the colours I guessed by using common sense. [#]
Feel free to link us to other famous photographs that have been colorized by leaving a comment!
