We've seen colorized portraits of popular and historical figures, but Webmaster Dave over at Shorpy.com allows us to see history in an entirely new light with his ongoing submissions of large-format Kodachromes. Dave's website generally focuses on extracting pictures from the online catalog of the Library of Congress and sharing them with a wide audience, but his personal effort to adjust the color and contrast of these archived transparencies has amplified their reality and even enlivened them.
These are great!
The term “colorized” tends to imply photos originally shot in B&W with color added later, but it looks like these were originally shot in color and the “colorization” process consisted of sharpening them up a little.
Here’s an original from the Library of Congress collection:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsac.1a35356/?co=fsac
…compare with the enhanced version here:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/alfred-t-palmer-dave-shorpy-kodachromes
Pingback: Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Women Building Airplanes During WWII, in Color
I think – the original color film – like technicolor – ave a “larger than life” look – one of the most interesting aviation books I have on WW2 is this
Fighter Command: American Fighters in Original WWII Color
You see the war in a completely different light
Pun? 8 ^ )
Well played Grumpy
Outstanding pics ORPO, thanks for sharing!
Have any you tried to imagine the plants as they were? When I lived in San Diego in the early 80s you could drive along the Pacfic Coast Highway – you would see a huge building that use to be Consolidated’s B-24 factory.
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/visualmedia/photos/otc40s.html
Where LAX is was Mines Field – where P51s were made – there is supposed to be the remnants of an airfield where Ford made B24s