I thought that it might be instructive to see how a photo can mislead. Take a look at photo A. This is often produced and can be seen in A New Excalibur. Its very dramatic showing the officer about to unleash his tank into the fray on the Menin Road. However this is part of a larger photo that has been severely cropped to produce the most dramatic effect. This can be a bit like using a zoom lens. Look at photos B & C, these are from the same negative but give a different impression. Photo B shows that the officer is standing more to the side than might be thought on the basis of photo A. There is also an extra spectator visible and the man on top of the tank can be seen clearly. None are wearing tin hats and all are relaxed, clearly this is not that close to the front line well out of sniper range certainly. One also wonders if the officer is about to order the tank to pitch down into what is some form of pit surrounded by sandbags. One must also think about the unseen spectator the cameraman. A photo of this quality must, given the technology of the day, have been taken with a quarter plate camera at the very least and more probably a half plate. This means that the photographer would be standing up in front of the tank and using a tripod. Again something that suggests that this is well back from the fighting. Now look at photo C one can now see that photo B has also been edited to remove the trees. These show no evidence of being in an area subject to shell fire (which the Menin Road and its environs certainly where. It is also possible on both B and C to see more trees in leaf in the near distance. This is very much a behind the lines posed photo. All of this suggests that one should be very wary of WW1 action shots!
Absolutely. There are a number of well-known doctored WW1 photos in circulation, but there's one of King Albert of the Belgians which began life as him commiserating with retreating and demoralised Belgian soldiers and gradually becomes a shot of him standing with hands defiantly on hips and new, aggressive expressions on the faces of the men with him. All done in the interests of morale.
__________________
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
James H wrote: Absolutely. There are a number of well-known doctored WW1 photos in circulation, but there's one of King Albert of the Belgians which began life as him commiserating with retreating and demoralised Belgian soldiers and gradually becomes a shot of him standing with hands defiantly on hips and new, aggressive expressions on the faces of the men with him. All done in the interests of morale.
Sounds like the (in)famous one of Lenin in 1917 adressing a crowd with the main Bolshevics around him; as the Soviet Union progressed the photo passed through a whole series of versions loosing individual revolutionaries as they fell out of favour until the final version has Lenin standing with only Stalin (who had originally been on the periphery of the group) standing next to him.
Sometime we see what we expect to see in a photo. An old university friend of mine was teaching history to a class of army kids at Aldershot using a pack of standard teaching material. This included a much used photo of Churchill standing amidst the rubble after an air raid in 1940 giving a defiant V for victory sign. The children asked her "please why is Mr Churchill telling those workmen to ______off?" On closer examiniation it was clear that a group of workmen working on the rubble were shouting something at Churchill and he was replying in a somewhat robust fashion, the position of his hand made it clear, if one actually looked, that this was not a V for Victory sign he was giving!
I thought that it might be instructive to see how a photo can mislead. Take a look at photo A. This is often produced and can be seen in A New Excalibur. Its very dramatic showing the officer about to unleash his tank into the fray on the Menin Road. However this is part of a larger photo that has been severely cropped to produce the most dramatic effect. This can be a bit like using a zoom lens. Look at photos B & C, these are from the same negative but give a different impression. Photo B shows that the officer is standing more to the side than might be thought on the basis of photo A. There is also an extra spectator visible and the man on top of the tank can be seen clearly. None are wearing tin hats and all are relaxed, clearly this is not that close to the front line well out of sniper range certainly. One also wonders if the officer is about to order the tank to pitch down into what is some form of pit surrounded by sandbags. One must also think about the unseen spectator the cameraman. A photo of this quality must, given the technology of the day, have been taken with a quarter plate camera at the very least and more probably a half plate. This means that the photographer would be standing up in front of the tank and using a tripod. Again something that suggests that this is well back from the fighting. Now look at photo C one can now see that photo B has also been edited to remove the trees. These show no evidence of being in an area subject to shell fire (which the Menin Road and its environs certainly where. It is also possible on both B and C to see more trees in leaf in the near distance. This is very much a behind the lines posed photo. All of this suggests that one should be very wary of WW1 action shots!
acctualy what it looks like to me (the first image appears to have some image distortion) is that these images were taken with different cameras, the first two taken at the same time, the third one possibly later or from a different angle, the reason for this is of course that early on it was common practice to pose subjects for dramatic effect, which is still common place today. it is likely that many WWI action shots are in fact coached, keep in mind feild photographers were sent in mainly to capture both the conflict and propaganda for the home front, this is a textbook example of the latter. for instance in WWII there is a famous photo of a soviet soldier pointing his gun in the air and calling for a charge, it always appears as a marker for the conflict, this picture was coached, the soldier in question wasnt in action at the time.
theburk wrote:acctualy what it looks like to me (the first image appears to have some image distortion) is that these images were taken with different cameras, the first two taken at the same time, the third one possibly later or from a different angle, the reason for this is of course that early on it was common practice to pose subjects for dramatic effect, which is still common place today. it is likely that many WWI action shots are in fact coached, keep in mind feild photographers were sent in mainly to capture both the conflict and propaganda for the home front, this is a textbook example of the latter. for instance in WWII there is a famous photo of a soviet soldier pointing his gun in the air and calling for a charge, it always appears as a marker for the conflict, this picture was coached, the soldier in question wasnt in action at the time.
Those shots are all the one shot with different editing as Centurion points out. It would be extremely difficult to get identical poses for three different photos.
Some of the photos taken by Frank Hurley have been doctored by the photographer himself. He was quoted as saying that he did it because he had seen the scenes that he composed from seperate photos but could not capture the same effect in one shot. I recently borrowed a book from my local library about Frank Hurley; I must see if I can get it again.
If you look very closely the Officer's raised arm appears to have been added, it doesn't appear to match rest of his jacket. If you edit it out you get a guy standing with both hands in his pockets which looks more natural if less dramatic. I tried posting an edited version to illustrate this but was thwarted by the blasted glitch in the forum software.
If you look very closely the Officer's raised arm appears to have been added, it doesn't appear to match rest of his jacket. If you edit it out you get a guy standing with both hands in his pockets which looks more natural if less dramatic. I tried posting an edited version to illustrate this but was thwarted by the blasted glitch in the forum software.
One other odd point is that his watch is on the wrong arm. It definitely isn't a reversed shot as the battalion number is just visible in shot C.
