Monday, September 8, 2008

Photographs, Photos, and Pix

I'm hopeful about the microSD chip that I'm going to get soon for my Motorola Razr cell phone. It seems that Verizon lets you have mercy on this- downloading pix to your computer via the card, but not the cable, as I tried last night. And it surprised me to find out that LOTS of color photographs (note- not Colored/ tinted, but actual color) exist from the 1930's. Life back then was not totally in black and white. In fact, the first color photograph was made in 1872 -it isn't that complex of an invention- 3 or 4 color filters layered on one another.

And Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, in 1907 and onwards, used new technology, based on 3-layer technology, to make really nice color photos- high resolution. Of course, we all know about the WWII color photos, but it would make logical sense that there be WWI color photos! (www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com) There sure are! They were shot by the French Army, the proprietor of early color film.

And contrary to what Hollywood wants you to believe, The Wizard of Oz is not the first color film. Many color films were made in the 1920's, but were converted to B/W for TV, and film destroyed, in the 1950's. Wine and Cheese bars didn't exist back then. And digital photography was first commercialized in the early 1990's. It looks like a Polaroid camera, another obsolete toy, but without the ears. It wasn't until the digital cameras became palm-sized earlier this decade that people started to buy them. And hail to the SD card!

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