Here’s something for any of us who would like to capture the REAL look and feel of days gone by on our model railroads: the 100 year old photo blog:
http://www.shorpy.com/
Nothing really earth shaking, but it’s an interesting way to reexamine our history through photos and newspaper clippings, formatted as a current events blog. There seem to be a large amount of photos from the Library of Congress’ site, which makes sense as we ALL own the rights to them. There are enough new photos that make the trip worthwhile.
All in all, a good (and sometimes depressing) way to get a daily dose of American history, and a way to allow us to rethink how we period modelers screw things up!
Fantastic link, Ray! I could spend hours there.
Tom
The color pictures seem a little strange. The quality looks too good for as old as they are. Almost like they are recreations.Hmm…
Those color photos look like they’re from the Library of Congress Bound for Glory exhibition.
These photographs were all shot on Kodachrome in 4x5-inch format cameras and are of high quality, even by today’s standards. Those old film emulsions were very slow (ASA of 8 in 1940) and generally only used in situations with lots of light.
The color response was different, too — think of the colors in the “Wizard of Oz” which is from the same era.
-Mike
Some of the photos are also from the Charles Cushman photo collection which resides at Indiana State University. I can assure you that NONE of those photos are newly staged: Hollywood set directors WISH they could get period sets that correct. Even in the cases of old cameras taking glass plate B&W photos of VERY correctly dressed historical impersonators, there’s always something that gives away the fact that the resulting photo is modern.