Rephotography by Augustus deCorbeau
February 4th, 2008 2:55 PM / Location: 39.284698,-76.58999
The view down the 600 block of S. Wolfe Street, Baltimore
(c. 1912-2008)
Now home to Smedly's Coffee House.
(You might have to give it a bit to let the animation to fully load.)
The original photo was taken in 1912 by a fellow by the name of Thomas Chew Worthington III. Turns out he was quite the character. According to the Maryland Historical Society:
"By profession, Worthington was a salesman for many years with the firm of John T. Willis, Co., distributors of X-ray and photographic equipment. By inclination, he was a magician, photographer, and collector. A friend of many eminent practitioners of the prestidigital art, Worthington’s own collection of magic equipment was accepted by the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. "
Bet he would have played SF0, if it was around back then.
Here's how the street looks today, 96 years after old T.C. snapped his photo.
It took me a couple tries to find the right place to stand so that the perspective was the same as in the original photo. It's still not exactly right, but I think that's mostly due to differences in the lenses and camera equipment.
It's surprising how little things have changed.
Well... except for one thing. If you look closely at the 1912 photo, there's a three-story haberdashery on the corner. Today, that same building -- where we have our coffee house -- is only two stories tall. During renovations, we even found the remains of the stairwell that would have led up to the (now-missing) third story.
At some point in the intervening years, the third floor vanished! I know it's not any sort of illusion or prestidigitation, because I've actually climbed up onto the roof with a ladder. No secretly-invisible-from-the-ground hideout or anything.
Curious indeed.
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Since the point of the task seemed to be the recreation aspect, rather than the source of the original photo itself, I figured it would be OK to use a historical photo – it doesn’t say that it has to be a photo that *you* took over 12 years ago.
I've known about the old photo of this building for a while now, but I couldn’t think of anything good to do with it (other than just adding it to my desktop wallpaper rotation) until I saw this task. The idea of doing a composite panorama shot came to me as soon as I read the description -- but I had to wait to catch the scene with the lighting at the correct angle before I could actually finish it.
I can assure you that taking the recreation photo, as well as the accompanying Photoshop work to make the animation was all done this afternoon. Furthermore, the second proof image is straight off the camera, unmodified, so you can check the EXIF data if you want.
=)
No, no, no…
You have it all wrong.
It's just I just saw that this task got approved today.
I meant the Rephotography and animated giferness.
I never expected someone to have to take the original photo.
I am not going to download your pics and open them in bridge to pull the EXIF data.
Nice work. Sorry if my comments come off sounding negative.
Very well done. I wish I had something constructive to say, but the words don't seem to want to come to me.
This is so cool! I love old buildings and thinking about what they were like a long time ago. It's incredible how little has actually changed. I especially love that you found the staircase to the missing upper floor, that's like somthing out of a nancy drew book. High Five!
Smashing smashing job and so fast…
Wow… I would cry retrotasking…
but I don't think I would care either way.
Just beautifull.