Artist Photoshops Scenes From WWII Into Present Day 150
Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov has taken old World War II photos and photoshopped them over the locations in present day. The scenes from places like Prague, Vienna, and Moscow are incredibly well done and a neat way to appreciate history.
Very thought-provoking. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a great way to remember past events by envisioning them through today's eye. Very cool.
Try in b&w (Score:4, Insightful)
Gets really quite eerie when the pictures are displayed in a software capable of switching to greyscale. Not "better" of course, the contrast was surely also the point...but interesting, more blended.
Though it does make the photos more distant, I guess - doesn't help with how, while being a small kid, I thought for some time that the world had to be so sad place in the past, without colors ;) (I apparently missed the existence of color paintings/etc.; and, in retrospect, wasn't very wrong; in some twisted way...)
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With the way technology is going I imagine we're not far from an augmented reality app that would be able to overlay/blend pictures like this into live footage and display it. How eerie would that be ?
Very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably the most interesting use of photoshoping I've seen yet. By seeing the conditions of the streets and buildings merged straight into modern times, you really get a sense of how war-torn the world was at the time.
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Agreed. Very impressive.
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Good start (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting start, but methinks has a ways to go. As others note, it's mostly just rough masking one photo onto another.
Methinks the effect would be more striking if the foreground characters were crisply masked onto the background photo, with a broader blending of striking background distinctions (rubble). Don't just have a soldier fade into the modern setting.
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I couldn't agree more. Especially when you consider that the odds of those soldiers still being alive are not good at all.
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I was thinking the same thing at first, but if it was blended in more smoothly, would the intention of it have been as clear?
The stark contrast makes it clear that these are two distinct images of different eras.
Re:Very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because it's easy, doesn't mean the value as art is any less potent.
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MBGMorden said "This is probably the most interesting use of photoshoping I've seen yet".
So I don't know where you get off saying "Not really." on someone's opinion, as it's not stated as fact.
I agree with MBGMorden in the fact that the images, although maybe in your opinion, are not the most technically advanced computer manipulated images, do instill within me a feeling of realism of WW2 for myself. It's hard for me to look at a BnW image of a photograph in the 1940's and feel some sort of realism to it.
Re:Very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between a master and an amateur is not the technical skill, but the emotional content of the works. People can study Vermeer's brushstrokes or Ansel Adams' exposure techniques all they want, but it won't make them into their role models.
Same here. What makes this awesome isn't the user's technical competency of an image editing software. It's the fact that the images created are a powerful reminder of how recent WW2 was, and how little separates us now from them then.
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Maybe, but I'd rather see the two photos side by side so that I can actually compare them and see the differences between the two photos rather than having part of one photo obscuring part of another. As it is you don't get to fully see either image.
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Hm, js app, with a slider, to transition between two images & with some areas of each image (people for example) given early prominence during transition to "their" version of the photo? Sound like something a slashdotter could do... ;)
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A lot seperates us between now and then. Countless dead, every family across the planet touched by it. Nobody on this planet has a family that was untouched by that war. Absolutely Everyone lost someone in that war.
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Really I think all that separates us is nuclear weapons. Without them there would have been (at least) 3 world wars in the last century.
Twice in the first half of the twentieth century, people very much like us turned their entire effort into waging industrial war against each other. We came ex
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A lot seperates us between now and then. Countless dead, every family across the planet touched by it. Nobody on this planet has a family that was untouched by that war. Absolutely Everyone lost someone in that war.
That is an interesting thought there; but consider the Inuit of Canada. It wasn't until the 50's and 60's that we were finally introduced to "modern technology". We literally went from isolated hunter gatherers using spears and still living off the land to meeting explorers who came by airplane introducing us to rifles and automobiles. We didn't have the slow technological advance that the rest of the world adjusted to; it was a huge leap for us up here and most of the elders are still trying to adjust.
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Same here. What makes this awesome isn't the user's technical competency of an image editing software.
I thought that the artist's hands of ham totally ruined the effect in about 80% of the works embedded in TFA. Especially when instead of some kind of graceful fade at an obvious point of congruence of contrast in the image, he made some terrible crap cutout fade at a point where the contrast is totally different. Some of them are really slick, and some of them look like elementary school collage.
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Re:Very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, denigrating the technical simplicity of the task is really uncalled for. It doesn't matter that it is technically rather simple to perform, many great works of art are not necessarily difficult in technique, but their value comes from the unique and meaningful perspective of the artist. In this particular case, I have to say that these are some of the most inspired, evocative, and meaningful photo manipulations I have ever seen or am ever likely to see. I care not for how relatively difficult they may or may not have been to produce.
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Agreed. This isn't about technical expertise; indeed, I think the rawness may actually add something, the way an irregular beat can accent music. By the time I got done looking my hair was standing on end, and not because the pictures were so frightening or dramatic, but because the juxtaposition was so effective.
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Disclaimer: I'm not defending the GP.
It doesn't matter that it is technically rather simple to perform, many great works of art are not necessarily difficult in technique, but their value comes from the unique and meaningful perspective of the artist. In this particular case, I have to say that these are some of the most inspired, evocative, and meaningful photo manipulations I have ever seen or am ever likely to see.
Perhaps this is most meaningful photo-manipulation you'll ever see... but I really doubt that's true. The photoshopping here is amateurish, and a detriment, I think, to what could be a very powerful set of artwork. Had the artist managed to blend together the photographs to create a single imagine, rather than two rather obviously layered images, the "ghosts of the past" effect would be much more striking. The artist could have conveyed much more subtle and penetratin
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Cutting the image and blending it along the edge of a soldier, for instance, would have made a more realistic and polished piece, but I think it would have made the overall image cheesier, tackier. This is about contrast... then and now.
My opinion, of
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And like any art, that is your personal take on it. I on the other hand happen to agree that it does a lot more for me fully black and white.
For one you'd stare at it far longer, analyzing and thinking about what you're experiencing.
For two the whole point of the work is the blending of past and present, something more effective if the line separating the two isn't painfully obvious. At least.. from my point of view.
Re:Very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't even call this photoshopping. All he did was take a photo at the same angle and then use a mask to show various parts.
Either with lenses with the exact same distortion or correcting for the distortion in the old photo, new photo, or both. And making sure the scale is exactly right for both images.
Even just finding the exact positioning for the camera to produce the proper alignment is a challenge, especially if it has to be taken with the camera in the middle of modern traffic, or if the terrain has changed enough that you can't stand there anymore.
In practice, you'll have to make lots of adjustments in post just to get the images aligned properly even if you do get the modern photo taken from the right position with the right angle.
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http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html [ted.com]
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Tempe Town Lake (AZ) recently blew up. I have photos from before the accident, and I happened to be in town just after they drained the lake, and shot a lot of pix at twilight. I plan on going back late this year and maybe trying to go back the same day next year and try to re-shoot the same pix with the lake full. I think it could be interesting, I believe it won't be easy.
Skilled Photoshop use is just that: a skill. It takes a lot of work to make good p
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When lack of technical proficiency is obvious enough so as to be quite distracting from the art, pointing that out is a valid criticism.
Those pix are incredible. (Score:2)
The first one (on the stairs) was the best.
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That's mostly a way to attract "no, x one!' ;) At least most of them are interesting in their own right.
Second from last gets quite a bit creepy; you can see an old woman in "present version" - it's not inconceivable that she's also present in the group of past kids; "looking" at herself.
Brillant! (Score:2)
Those are simply awesome!
The sad thing is, if you're under the age of 30, the vast majority of Americans can't relate to WWII in the least. You ask the average American on the street and they don't know the difference between WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, or the Gulf War.
Plus, even young aviation enthusiasts tend to have a low regard and no interest for any aircraft which isn't jet powered. Meaning, another area of interest which now has a complete disconnection from WWI and WWII history.
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Regarding the rest of your comment, I beg to differ!
I'm in the "under 30" category, and I know a great many deal of people my age or younger, who care about history, learn as much as they can about it, and have hobbies that usually involve modelling or simulating WWII-era war machines.
The sad part is that most of those youngsters are also the first ones to enroll in the armed forces, and too few of them ever make it ba
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Sure the differences are easy...
WWI we went against Germany.
WWII we fought Germany and Japan (2 countries so world war 2)
Korean War we went in Korea.
Vietnam Ware we went in Vietnam
Gulf War we whined and complained how nasty BP is. Because the CEO wasn't a good political speaker.
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He forgot twice - once on one side and once on the other.
The German army HQ receives news that Mussolini's Italy has joined the war. "We'll have to put up 10 divisions to counter him!" says one general.
"No, he's on our side," says another.
"Oh, in that case we'll need 20 divisions."
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I think he meant that anyone under about 30 hasn't been able to talk to people that were present at WWII.
I'm 25, and my grandfather fought in Korea. I have heard plenty of Korean war stories, but not so many WWII stories. The most WWII education i have is from either high school or Call of Duty.
People over about 30 years old probably have parents/grandparents that could tell them stories about the war. I wasn't so lucky. I actually know almost nothing about the First World War. off to Wikipedia i go!
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Because they havent tried. I introduced my daughter to a WW-II vet last week. He served in the army and was in one of the last pushes for Berlin. He had mentioned that he was not much older than her (she is 18) when he was fighting over there.
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Likewise for me. I'm around your age and my maternal grandfather, who is in his early 90s now, served for about 3 years during the war. The only stories I've gotten out of him are of the humorous anecdote variety, and I've never pressed for more.
OTOH, my paternal grandfather, who I never saw, was a medic in Europe after d-day. We still have his personal diary from that time and , as you might imagine, it has some pretty unpleasant sections.
I suspect they don't tell us these things because we would see them
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Well, I'm in my mid-late twenties and all my grandparents are/were old enough to remember the war years but the most I've ever heard about it from any of them was my paternal grandfather mentioning how everything was rationed. Of course, he was only in his teens at the time, wasn't like he was a soldier or anything...
(Please note: I'm european so my perspective might be a bit different, I've been a student at a university where to this day there are visible signs of the fighting (bullet and shrapnel damage
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I'm european
Please note, Europeans do not fall in the same category as Americans. Americans are extremely myopic, uneducated, and ignorant in general. Plus, Europeans, unlike Americans, had to live through rebuilding of their cities. This means another generation saw the damage and learned about it first hand. Many Europeans still have monuments in both big and little cities denoting significant events of that war. Its entirely a different culture, mindset, and environment. As such, many Europeans still have some conne
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I wouldn't think any American under maybe 75 could relate to WWII
Those over the age of thirty have a much better chance of relating to the technology base. As someone else pointed out, it was a lot easier to talk with someone who was actually in those wars. Likewise, many more civilians were also private pilots. Many of the instructors were war pilots - or at least someone you stand a chance of bumping into at the airport.
These days, the number of WWII vets who are still alive are quickly dwindling. Which is why there are active projects to record their stories. Unfortu
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WWII was much, much more than that. You can only relate if you've taken an active interest to allow yourself to relate to those wars. And if you have done so, you absolutely are not the average American.
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The sad thing is, if you're under the age of 30, the vast majority of Americans can't relate to WWII in the least. You ask the average American on the street and they don't know the difference between WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, or the Gulf War.
And what's even sader is that the American's who do know about WWII know nothing about the eastern front.
Let's put it this way...
US forces only suffered about 500,000 dead during WWII and only faced a fraction of the German forces in Africa, France, and Germa
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Oh and note... There is some incongruity between the casualty and force ratio simply because, Americans tended to capture large amounts of German soldiers while on the Eastern front, they tended to fight the Russians until there was no option left.
Of course, towards the end of the war, many German units walked across the eastern front to the eastern to surrendered to the Americans.
You really need to understand the context of why though.
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Of course, towards the end of the war, many German units walked across the eastern front to the eastern to surrendered to the Americans.
Most Americans not only have no idea such things too place, but would have no idea why they would specifically want to surrender to Americans.
After the fall of of the Soviet Union, released papers indicate that as late as the late 50's, some of the last WWII German's were still rotting in Soviet prisons. A huge chunk died from torture, starvation, so on and so on. Some just simply disappeared while being moved to another prison. That is, they checked out and simply never arrived at their destination.
Thanks
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And why is this in idle? (Score:2)
There's always someone saying things should or shouldn't be in idle but surely this is one of the cases where it shouldn't be?
There's been nothing but positive reviews of this guy's work here so far (and one Soviet Russia joke)
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I'll agree that this is the best thing by a very long way that I've seen in Idle so far.
Little known facts about Russia (Score:2)
So what? (Score:2)
This is just a small sampling... (Score:5, Informative)
Please mod parent up - thanks! (Score:2)
Thanks for the link. It's a shame the original link didn't have it. Good stuff. This one in particular gave me some chills: http://pics.livejournal.com/sergey_larenkov/pic/000029eg/ [livejournal.com]
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That's a pretty interesting hit-counter on that page... BTW this is in idle? Why?
Locations (Score:2)
I'll start: sergeylarenkov12.jpg shows Soviet soldiers in front of the Reichstag building, Berlin.
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The fourth one is in Russia, like many of the photos there. You can tell it's Russia when there's little difference between the background and the overlaid photos.
Re:Locations (Score:4, Informative)
sergeylarenkov000.jpg (3rd photo) is Hofburg in Vienna, Austria ->http://goo.gl/M7r8
sergeylarenkov11.jpg (11th photo) is Paulanergasse in Vienna ->http://goo.gl/GDJ2 (right next to the TU Wien)
one of the others seems to me like Budapest, Hungary - but i'm not sure.
Greetings from Vienna!
ßeta
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Flight over Warsaw in 1945 (Score:2)
Good idea, poor execution. (Score:2)
It's a great idea, but the execution is absolutely awful. The guy clearly spent time getting the angle of the contemporary photos right, but was completely sloppy with his production work. It looks like he got lazy, or he's not particularly good with Photoshop. Instead of just going with messy fades, he should have cropped the imposed images with more precision, so that it looked like those old scenes were more integrated as opposed to being merely superimposed. It would have been more striking and would ha
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Leave it to /. to analyze the technical merit while completely ignoring the creation itself. The creation need not be technical excellence to deliver its creative intent.
Look at many of the world's famous paintings and its easy to understand why they were absolutely not appreciated within the artist's lifetime. But if you allow yourself to go beyond the surface - awe-striking wonder can frequently be found.
There absolutely are facets of those pictures I would do completely different. Many have actually been
Idle (Score:2)
I think this is quite easily the best thing I've ever seen on idle. Thanks!
Retouching (Score:2, Insightful)
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I normally see "photoshopping" as "faking" (not the greatest connotation for Adobe!). This is more like composition than retouching (which is just fixing up a few bad patches).
It happened. (Score:2)
War happened, in Europe, and people who lived through it are still alive and a part of the mass consciousness. One of the reasons Europeans are less turned on by war than US-anians.
Somebody from the eastern USA (Score:2)
Somebody from the eastern USA needs to trek out to the Civil War battlefields and try this. All the Mathew Brady photos are in the public domain.
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That is an awesome idea! You wouldn't happen to have a link to any especially high-res online copies of Brady's and other contemporary photos, would you? Otherwise, time to Google.
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No, start Googling. The Wiki article on the battle of Antietam (aka Sharpsburg) did have contemporary and historic photos of that battlefield. I'm sure there are many others. With a proper search, combined with Creative Commons content from places like Flickr, you might even luck out and get the right angles without having to leave your living room.
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I'm Googling now for images of nearby battles/battlefields. I can't get to the east where most of them took place, but I'm sure there are some.
Hell, even old pictures of the town will be cool.
How to approach the images (Score:2)
I believe the artist has approached this to provide an interpreted contrast between what a 15 year old sees today in his town, and what happened in that exact spot some 70 years ago.
This means there is no seamless transitions. But a conceptual overlay.
The images are striking for their impact.
Could be effective (Score:2)
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I had to.
No, you didn't.
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The point was to look at place years after they had been destroyed and to contrast the iece of history with now. NOT to make it seem like it's happening right now.
Seriously, get with it.
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However, I agree with the GP that the photo-shopping/blending aspect looks somehow amateurish, and breaks me out of what would otherwise be a very sublime experience I think. The problem is that the fading between the two photos seems haphazard. I understand that the point of the photos is to s
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The problem is that the fading between the two photos seems haphazard. I understand that the point of the photos is to show the contrast between the two time periods. As such, you want it to be clear that there are two photos being overlaid. However it just looks weird to have, for example, people be half-erased. The artist could have instead defined a blending edge that didn't cut across any people (or cars, etc.) so that each sub-region of the image looked fully-formed and thus more real. I think this would have made the effect more powerful.
Exactly!
Almost any one of those "then and now" photos where people hold up an old photo of a location while taking a photo of it now beat this collection in every aspect possible.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinflower/3611307186/ [flickr.com]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwgbadmissions/3947916581/ [flickr.com]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwgbadmissions/3768986885/in/set-72157621758292209/ [flickr.com]
Those have both an artistic AND journalistic feel to them.
The fact that you see the hand holding the photo actually connects you the viewer (cause i
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Well, I agree as well. I first went to go look at the photos, then came to the comments because I was certain I couldn't be the only one who didn't think they were so very well done. Great concept, could use some more time cooking in photoshop.
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Spoken like someone who has never created a work of art. There is more value there than the technical expertise require to create it, just like there is more value to a painting than the technical expertise of the paint strokes.
Content is everything.
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Exactly. When I saw these photos a few days ago, I immediately recognized the lack of technical skill... however, I was still moved to tears (yeah, I'm a girl, get over it) and several other emotions. These images are simple yet powerfully evocative and completely fantastic as is. The sense of seeing ghosts, or better yet, viewing a memory through someone else's senses is amazing.
Despite the lack of technical skill, the artist achieved the goal of having me feel that I was standing in another's shoes. An
Actually... No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite the lack of technical skill, the artist achieved the goal of having me feel that I was standing in another's shoes.
I am guessing here, but I am quite certain that you were actually moved by the original art and authenticity of the old photos he picked for their "power".
Kinda like how an old song sung by an "American Idol" star doesn't get better - it was good to begin with. At best, it will be "OK". At worst... well...
And it works the same way for "professionals" too. [youtube.com]
And no amount of hardware can make an artist out of a hack. Particularly not a tablet in this case.
To fix those, one would need to use some actual elbow gr
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Cause he was taking photos of dead things - buildings. Whoever was taking those old photos was taking photos of living people.
Living people doing "important things". Meaningful things. Things worth being preserved for posterity.
Those photos don't contrast - they clash.
Umm? You might want to look up the definition of "contrast".
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Spoken like someone who has never passed through the same street as someone who created a work of art. Even a bad work of art.
Technique is (in most cases) not art in itself, but it is what is necessary to create a rhythm and a beat from what is simply "banging on the drums".
That is why there are such things as art academies and art teachers that teach art lessons in such establishments. 90% perspiration and all that.
Very, very, very, VERY few people are natural talents born with both skill and (for the lack
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A little more than that, also as close as possible (after taking into account differences in frame size) focal lenght.
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Actually not hard. I have done this with a laptop, the right software and a camera that allows full time preview.
you put the old photo on the screen at a 25% transparent setting and over the cameras live view, move the tripod and adjust zoom until you got the shot. click.
Low tech : print the old photo on a tranparency and hold it in front of the lens until it all lines up.
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Yeah, but it's not something readily done on a whim, as you yourself said. With traffic around; and possibly all the equipment... (especially considering Russia)
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Getting it pretty close would be enough that you could straighten it all out in the editing. Somebody else also posted [slashdot.org] some Flickr links showing people holding old photographs, which is another way to do the “viewfinding” without needing the foresight, ability, or trouble of printing them on transparencies. Just line up the shot, then pull the photo out of the view without moving the camera.
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PS. Could you point me to thesolution / software / etc. you've used? I'll be setting up a decent stop motion rig at some future point in time, maybe things I've found & will find aren't the most optimal ones.
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One way of doing it: laptop running OS-X + a camera with live preview on the laptop. Then use afloat [infinite-labs.net] to overlay things. I'm a happy afloat user, and it has helped tremendously with some CAD applications that don't let you overlay graphic files as backgrounds for tracing.
Your right (Score:4, Interesting)
I lived near "A bridge to far" and in some movies, that is very eary. You realize your house is one of the landing fields. But then, I used to often go past a spot in the woods were if you went of the bicycle path a little bit, down, there was a small monument were people were killed by the germans.
If a german asks the way, I point them in the wrong direction. It is how I was raised. I might be silly after so many decades, but it is better then forgetting.
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If a german asks the way, I point them in the wrong direction. It is how I was raised. I might be silly after so many decades, but it is better then forgetting.
Wow.