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History’s Oldest Color Photos Show How the World Looked Like in the Early 1900s (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
21 points by WirelessGigabit on March 3, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



I couldn't help but notice that most of the photos are of women and that the few men represented are mostly soldiers of some kind. I wonder if that was the case for most of the early color photos taken, or only true for the early color photos that have survived this long, or if it was just a result of choices made by the author of the blog post. Today we can photograph anything anywhere with near zero effort/cost, so what people today choose to photograph isn't as interesting as what people decided to take pictures of when it wasn't something done casually


I'm sure there's bias and variables to this I'm not considering and outside influence, but most of my portrait photography groups and feeds I follow still contain mostly women models.

I'd also say that taking GOOD portraits in 2023 still requires work. I generally set up the models and use external lighting. It is easier for sure, but there's still intention and purpose.

With digital photography I think the main benefit is that I can take 50 shots that are roughly the same with no consequence, to later cull until I find the perfect frame.


I'll also add that the survivability of a photo is probably related to the quality of the photo itself. I imagine there were a lot of examples of bad or uninteresting photography that were just lost to time.


I'm amazed by the Christina photo. It could've been taken today.


I was thinking the same. I'm so impressed by the first "Christina in Red" photo. It's now definitely my favourite earliest photograph.




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