"Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a chemist turned photographer ahead of his time who undertook an ambitious photographic survey of the Russian Empire for Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909 and 1915, he completed tours of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped train carriage which had been provided by the Ministry of Transportation. What made this project remarkable was his use of an innovative technique for taking photographs in full and extremely vivid colour. He was able to capture colour by using a camera that exposed one oblong glass plate three times in rapid succession through three different colour filters: blue, green, and red. To view his images, he printed positive glass slides of his negatives and projected them through a triple lens magic lantern. The images were projected through the three lenses and, with the use of colour filters, superimposed in full colour on to a screen." - April Buchheit from Bookmarklet

I feel guilty that I feel this way, but color really helps me relate better to people of that period. I was just watching that link to color film footage of London in 1927 and felt the same way. There's something that makes it so much more real and empathizable even though other things you'd think would be barriers (strange hairstyles, clothing) are still there. - Spidra Webster

It's surprising that he was able to take so many good photos of people. That's almost impossible to do with multiple exposures. - Gabe

You can see the motion in the shot he took of the kids on the hillside. - Spidra Webster

Spidra: yes, the shot of kids on the hillside (http://www.loc.gov/exhibit...) appears to be the only one that isn't posed. - Gabe

I know what you mean, Spidra. Somehow the detail of color make the people more real and their way of life somehow more relevant. - April Buchheit