Slitherine

I never use color photos in my scenarios. Whenever I come across them, I suspect "colorization" which I absolutely abhor (includes movies). Yet apparently there was some genuine color photography during the war, such as this:

Rare color photos cast new light on World War II

Nevertheless, as the article says, "It still seems a bit odd to see color photography from the Second World War. It still has the power to shock." That's why I will turn a color photo into black and white (and even age it a bit if necessary) before I include it in my stuff.

bru888 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 6:26 pm I never use color photos in my scenarios. Whenever I come across them, I suspect "colorization" which I absolutely abhor (includes movies). Yet apparently there was some genuine color photography during the war, such as this:

Rare color photos cast new light on World War II

Nevertheless, as the article says, "It still seems a bit odd to see color photography from the Second World War. It still has the power to shock." That's why I will turn a color photo into black and white (and even age it a bit if necessary) before I include it in my stuff.


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Yeah black and white photos definitely set the correct mood when playing OOB.

gunny wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:59 pm Yeah black and white photos definitely set the correct mood when playing OOB.

The vast preponderance of photography in WW2 was in black and white, as far as I know, and the popup messages usually read like newspaper articles of the time. Color just jars the senses in that, instead of reading the newspaper, or a set of orders with a photo attached, etc., one is looking through a window with bare eyes like a time machine. If OOB was a first-person shooter game, maybe that would work. Thankfully, it's not.

Black and white is a putting away. It’s a bit like being in a museum.
Coloring prevents putting away. Coloring allows people to tell themselves, we are told a story in which I can recognize myself. These people I see in the image could be me. It was yesterday and finally it could be today and so we have this identification and we are more interested in this story

terminator wrote: ↑Sun Mar 01, 2020 5:22 am Black and white is a putting away. It’s a bit like being in a museum.
Coloring prevents putting away. Coloring allows people to tell themselves, we are told a story in which I can recognize myself. These people I see in the image could be me. It was yesterday and finally it could be today and so we have this identification and we are more interested in this story

That's an interesting viewpoint.

My own point of view is that when I see images in this game, I am looking at newspapers of the time, or a bulletin with a photo attached to it. Overwhelmingly, photos during WW2 were black and white.

I see black and white as archival and historical; you see color as vibrant and current. Two different ways of achieving immersion.

The 6 red kills show up better in the color photo I did not recognize them in the black and white so this person was an ace. !!! Plus his tray table has peanuts and a coke on it. ....

Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak died at the age of just 21 on August 1, 1943 in Krasnyi Luch. Also known as Lilya, she was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War Two. She was the first female pilot to shoot down an enemy plane, the first of two female fighters to earn the title 'fighter ace' and the holder of the record for the greatest number of kills for a female fighter. With twelve solo victories and four shared kills over a total of 66 combat missions, she was immortalised despite being shot down near Orel during the Battle of Kursk as she attacked a formation of German planes.

That photo provides an opportunity to voice an objection once again: "colorization" which I absolutely abhor (includes movies). If you search for images of Lydia Litvyak, that image appears repeatedly and nearly all of them are in original black and white. In fact, there is one out there that blends the two formats:


Colorization is a modern artificiality and therefore is an immediate turn off to me as to historical value. This does an injustice to true color photos of WWII, rare as they are, I know. Even so, every time I see a color photo purportedly from the era of WWII, I suspect colorization.

Even so, there was going to be a plus side to this post as I rushed to Wikipedia to see if I could use Lydia Litvyak in our current work on Winter War 1940. Alas, "Litvyak flew her first combat flights in the summer of 1942" and even more alas, "On August 1, 1943, Litvyak did not come back to her base . . ." making the window of featuring her limited to just over a year.

But were I to use her photo, it definitely would be the black and white version with all due respect to your opinion, terminator, which I reproduce here because it is interesting:

terminator wrote: ↑Sun Mar 01, 2020 5:22 am Black and white is a putting away. It’s a bit like being in a museum.
Coloring prevents putting away. Coloring allows people to tell themselves, we are told a story in which I can recognize myself. These people I see in the image could be me. It was yesterday and finally it could be today and so we have this identification and we are more interested in this story

Nevertheless, designer's preference and choice for historical verisimilitude: B&W.

I certainly hope she'll show up in Red Steel. As Svetlana Alexievich showed, the role of women in the Soviet military was massively underplayed due to Soviet chauvinism. It'd be nice to see more women in an army that had huge numbers of them in every role from fighting infantry to colonel to fighter pilot to tanker to nurse.

Battle of Stalingrad in colour

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rs-on.html

And here are the originals. (I'll stop doing this from now on, terminator. I don't want to be a nuisance. )

Note the plural "originals." Apparently there are two black and white versions of this photo floating around. My guess is that some authority wanted a more attractive view, so they had the sky smoke airbrushed out and the image lightened. It's definitely the same photo; the unfurling flag and the angle of the soldier's arm are the same as are the positions of the people and vehicles in the street:

So the RED USA faction really existed ?

bru888 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:04 pm And here are the originals. (I'll stop doing this from now on, terminator. I don't want to be a nuisance. )

Note the plural "originals." Apparently there are two black and white versions of this photo floating around. My guess is that some authority wanted a more attractive view, so they had the sky smoke airbrushed out and the image lightened. It's definitely the same photo; the unfurling flag and the angle of the soldier's arm are the same as are the positions of the people and vehicles in the street:

Hmmm, colorization was quite popular at the time, and we have a colorized portrait of my Uncle who died on a B-17 bomber with the same "artificial" color as that of the sniper above. However I'm not sure how advanced they were with "airbrushing," as I thought this was an entirely modern technique (in fact it's a digitial photography term in general). I'm aware that "object removal" was in evidence during the deStalinization period (where people were removed from photos) but it's not all that sophisticated. Removing that smoke would entail quite a bit of precision work, wouldn't it? I don't really know -- I'm just curious as to whether they were that advanced in, say, 1945 or 1946.

Boarspear wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:38 am

bru888 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:04 pm And here are the originals. (I'll stop doing this from now on, terminator. I don't want to be a nuisance. )

Note the plural "originals." Apparently there are two black and white versions of this photo floating around. My guess is that some authority wanted a more attractive view, so they had the sky smoke airbrushed out and the image lightened. It's definitely the same photo; the unfurling flag and the angle of the soldier's arm are the same as are the positions of the people and vehicles in the street:

Hmmm, colorization was quite popular at the time, and we have a colorized portrait of my Uncle who died on a B-17 bomber with the same "artificial" color as that of the sniper above. However I'm not sure how advanced they were with "airbrushing," as I thought this was an entirely modern technique (in fact it's a digitial photography term in general). I'm aware that "object removal" was in evidence during the deStalinization period (where people were removed from photos) but it's not all that sophisticated. Removing that smoke would entail quite a bit of precision work, wouldn't it? I don't really know -- I'm just curious as to whether they were that advanced in, say, 1945 or 1946.

Good thought. No doubt some colorization of these photos was contemporaneous and other colorizations are more recent and involve modern technology. Those are definitely the same photo of Stalingrad; I'd bet my house on it.

Rare color photo of knocked out Jagdtiger


Jagdtiger number 131 of the PzJgAbt 653, Schwetzingen

Boarspear wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:38 am I'm aware that "object removal" was in evidence during the deStalinization period (where people were removed from photos) but it's not all that sophisticated. Removing that smoke would entail quite a bit of precision work, wouldn't it? I don't really know -- I'm just curious as to whether they were that advanced in, say, 1945 or 1946.

I think that removing the smoke in that picture would be (relatively) easy, at least compared to removing, say, those trucks down on the street in that photo. You might notice in the “airbrushed” Picture, the sky is almost universally the same color. In the unedited picture, the sky varies in color quite a bit (though a lot of that is probably aging). It’d probably be pretty difficult to do, but I think it was probably more than possible. Granted, I know little of photography and the like, so what do I know