
The First Photo of a Human Being, and How the Scene's Changed from 180 Years Ago - prismatic
https://www.vintag.es/2018/08/boulevard-du-temple-then-and-now.html
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culot
BTW: The article linked is a composite of articles copy-and-pasted from these
two sources:

Mainly:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-
history/this-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/this-
is-the-first-ever-photograph-of-a-human-and-how-the-scene-it-was-taken-in-
looks-today-9841706.html)

Additionally:

[https://mashable.com/2014/11/05/first-photograph-of-a-
human/...](https://mashable.com/2014/11/05/first-photograph-of-a-
human/#wmBIVmdSsgqk)

~~~
netsharc
And uhm, wtf kinda copy and paste is it. If you think that photo is the same
corner as it is today, hah, no. It's not the corner where the man had his shoe
shined, it's just some other random piece of road. It's not even the picture
from the Independent article. What the ????.

~~~
ghaff
The Wikipedia article [1] suggests that area of Paris has significantly
changed since that photo was taken. I suspect that corner doesn't exist as
such any more. (It's probably under the Place de la Republique.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple)

~~~
netsharc
I was bored and tried to find an old map of Paris, you're right, that street
corner is now under the Place (if the info in the Wikipedia article is
accurate).

[https://bibliotheques-
specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf000...](https://bibliotheques-
specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf0000856594/v0001.simple.selectedTab=record)

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dylan604
I often use long exposure (with heavy ND filters) during the day for the
specific purpose of removing people from the image. Cityscapes in a busy area
is nearly impossible to not have people in the image which makes it difficult
to sale the image. I'm only taking 20-30 seconds exposures vs the 7 minutes
mentioned in the article, but it really makes eliminating the crowds a much
more manageable task.

~~~
jedberg
Have you seen the technique where you take many quick photos over the course
of a few minutes, and then use photoshop to create a single image of all the
parts that don’t change?

[https://photoshoptrainingchannel.com/remove-tourists-
stack-m...](https://photoshoptrainingchannel.com/remove-tourists-stack-mode/)

~~~
dylan604
I am familiar with this technique, and it works well for a single still image.
My end goal is rarely a single image as I'm usually shooting timelapse. Since
it's timelapse, the motion blur still shows motion, but it also pretty much
ensures nobody is identifiable.

~~~
TomK32
Come Fly With Me did a really fantastic timelapse effect
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnhCeNkMO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnhCeNkMO8)
where the people in the foreground didn't run at regular speed.

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srge
It’s mind blowing that we can see photos almost 200 years old. Had the
technology been invented a little earlier and we could have had pictures of
Napoleon or even of the French Revolution.

~~~
culot
It's those 2000 year old photos that I hanker for. :) 200 years ago is
magical, 2000 years ago would be incredible. Oh, to peruse the stinky streets
of Herculaneum!

Gosh, I hope humanity can keep it up for another 2000 years, keeping out
heritage and history well-recorded.

~~~
modzu
well we have something better than photos from the ancient Greeks and
Egyptians -- sculpture! ex. the bust of nefertiti (~1345 BC)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_Artists rendition_.

When I look at the bust of Nefertiti I like to imagine Nefertiti saying
something like "destroy it, make the nose a little smaller, then execute the
artist".

~~~
kqr
To be fair, that'd just as likely be true of a photograph as well. People in
the digital age forget how much artistic freedom is granted by staging a
photograph and later processing it in the darkroom.

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s_weber
Shameless plug for a project I am involved in: re.photos [1] is a collection
of then and now pictures (also called rephotography [2]) created by the
platform's users. It provides an interface to filter the pictures (e.g.
geographically, temporally) and provides a basic tool to improve alignment of
two pictures.

Our user Nicolai Wolpert contributed particularly impressive pictures of the
1900 World's Fair in Paris [3]. See the comparison of the Quai des Nations in
1900 and 2017 [4] if you are in a hurry.

We feel that rephotography is a great tool to make history more tangible to a
greater audience. Sometimes it's difficult to visualize that and how people
lived in the past; seeing those two pictures taken in different times makes
changes (and consistency) in peoples' lives much more accessible. When taking
_after pictures_ this effect is even more pronounced. It's fascinating to know
that some photographer stood in the same place decades or a century ago. ;-)

This is mostly a passion-driven project at the moment, so it might be rough
around the edges in some places. In particular there isn't a mobile view yet
for most functionality, so I'd recommend using a larger screen.

[1] [https://www.re.photos/](https://www.re.photos/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rephotography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rephotography)

[3]
[https://www.re.photos/compilation/?tag=190](https://www.re.photos/compilation/?tag=190)

[4]
[https://www.re.photos/compilation/1450/](https://www.re.photos/compilation/1450/)

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linkmotif
> The man having his shoes shined can be seen in the bottom left.

The man doing the shining can be seen too, right? This whole piece is ignoring
that man? They both appear equally blurry

~~~
jaredsohn
>This whole piece is ignoring that man?

No it doesn't. The lede says "The earliest known photograph to include a
recognizable human form".

Later it says:

>The exception is the man at the lower-left who sat still long enough to
appear in the photograph. The person cleaning his boots is also visible,
although not as distinctly.

>It has been speculated that instead of a shoeshine boy, the man stood at a a
pump. However, comparison with another image taken by Daguerre of the same
spot at noon reveals boxes used to hold brushes and polishes.

An image later is captioned 'The man having his boots shined, and the person
doing the shining'.

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chacham15
I wonder if that guy was thinking to himself "what a lousy morning, the shoe
shiner took forever!"

~~~
DonHopkins
"...and why is the hair on the back of my neck standing up?"

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etiennemarcel
A better before/after taken from the same location: [http://www.niepce-
daguerre.com/boulevard_du_Temple_de_dag.ht...](http://www.niepce-
daguerre.com/boulevard_du_Temple_de_dag.html)

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mc32
This first photograph is in the vein of “street photography,” yet it remains a
genre underappreciated, with rare exceptions like the well known (by non
photographers) Cartier-Bresson. Yet, there are countless documenting quotidian
life.

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ggm
Two men: the shoeshine and the customer. D.O.Hill and Fox Talbot did
caloptypes in Edinburgh. One is in Charlotte square, with a ghostly horse and
man: man paid to hold horse while important person inside house.

