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Steichen Autochromes
... a complex process using three hues of dyed potato starch, autochromes were glass positives viewed with a projector or mounted on a light ... work! Art That is what I call art! Steichen autochromes Beautiful, so soft! (ShorpyBlog, Technology) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/07/2007 - 3:03am

Irtysh and Tobol Rivers: 1912
... clearer (if less romantic and impressionistic) than the Autochromes used from the early 1900s until the advent of Kodachrome in the ... 
 
Posted by Ken - 07/20/2007 - 7:01am -

The confluence of the Irtysh and Tobol rivers in the Russian Empire. Photograpy by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, 1912. View full size
GorskiiYour viewers may be interested in the Library of Congress site that features many more of these photos as well as informaiton about the photographer and his pioneering color photography:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html
Color ProcessOperating under permission of the Czar, this guy traversed Russia taking color pictures. He did so by taking three black and white images through red, green and blue filters. They were then re-combined by projectors to produce a full color image. The modern researchers did this by computer, as one would imagine. These are much clearer (if less romantic and impressionistic) than the Autochromes used from the early 1900s until the advent of Kodachrome in the 1930s.
Color?!I guess I'm naive, but I had no idea that color photography was available so long ago!
A few years ago, when theA few years ago, when the L.O.C. put up the site, I downloaded the three B&W negatives for one of the images and tried piecing it together in PaintShop Pro to make a color one.  It was crude in terms of alignment, but it worked.  What makes these images so cool is that they are preserved in B&W form, so the color never fades.  They're just stunning!  What's also cool is that they capture a way of life that vanished only a couple of years later with the revolution.  What a treasure!
TimelessThe detail in this panorama is amazing! It feels like one could step right into that two-story building and sit down for a meal or a drink.
Denny Gill
Chugiak, Alaska
More PhotosHere is the site of the Belorussians who deal with the photos of Proskudin-Gorskij. There are many more pictures and some other information. It's a pity that everything is in Russian.
Photos for the TsarMany of these pictures were in a book called PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THE TSAR edited by Robert A. Allshouse, published by The Dial Press in 1980.
One of the things that struck me about the pictures were several of villages of extremely crude hovels (how did these people survive the winters?) huddling in the shadows of beautiful huge extremely ornate Orthodox churches.  My first thought was, no wonder they had a revolution.
(Landscapes)

Echo Cliffs
... photo! I would love to see more photochromes on shorpy, autochromes too. Intriguing I know there were color photographs years ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 04/04/2014 - 1:26pm -

"Echo Cliffs, Grand River Canyon, Colorado." Photochrom print published in 1914 from a glass negative taken many years earlier by William Henry Jackson, whose Western views, developed in his railcar-darkroom, formed the basis of Detroit Photographic's holdings in the company's early years. View full size.
Great photo!I would love to see more photochromes on shorpy, autochromes too.
IntriguingI know there were color photographs years before Kodachrome, but I never knew they were available at the turn of the century. Or was this print hand-colored? It looks fantastic!
[The original photograph was black-and-white; colors were added during the printing process. -tterrace]
Glenwood CanyonThis is Glenwood Canyon, western Colorado (about 15 miles from my home).  Grand River is now called the Colorado River.  The railroad tracks are still there and heavily used by Union Pacific freight trains (mostly coal) as well as Amtrak passenger trains.  Interstate 70 follows the canyon on the opposite side of the river.  This is one of the most picturesque stretches of interstate highway anywhere in the U.S., and truly a marvel of engineering.
How it workedA tablet of lithographic limestone called a "litho stone" was coated with a light-sensitive surface composed of a thin layer of purified bitumen dissolved in benzene. A worker then pressed a reversed halftone negative against the coating and exposed it to daylight for 10 to 30 minutes in summer, or up to several hours in winter. The image on the negative caused varying amounts of light to fall on different areas of the coating, causing the bitumen to harden in proportion to the amount of light. The worker then used a solvent such as turpentine to remove the unhardened bitumen, and retouched the tonal scale of the chosen color to strengthen or soften tones as required. This resulted in an image being imprinted on the stone in bitumen. Each tint was applied using a separate stone that bore the appropriate retouched image. The finished print was produced using at least six, but more commonly 10 to 15, tint stones, requiring the same number of ink colors.
So: the original photographic negative was used to "expose" specially prepared lithographic stones, which were then etched and engraved by hand to modify them as required for each different ink color. Then the stones were used in succession to print the 6, 10, or 15 ink colors that appear in the final product.
Just two wordsThere are just two words for this Echo Cliffs colorized photo -- Incredible, Incredible.
(The Gallery, DPC, Landscapes, Photochrom, Railroads)
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