This photo is of Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (now a part of modern Uzbekistan). It was taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii around 1910. It captures me because, obviously, photos from that time are always seen in black and white. This photo looks like it could have been taken yesterday, like there was some sort of time-travel for either the subject or the photographer. It's a little unsettling, but neat to see these people as they would have looked then. Prokudin-Gorskii used a development process with red, blue, and green filters to get very close to true color in his black-and-white photographs. Read about the process (which I don't quite understand yet) at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html.
I don't remember where this town is located, but I think it's somewhere in Europe. I also don't know who took it (I saved it a long time ago without any information). I spend a lot of time trying to use natural light to reproduce a scene as close to what the eye sees it as, to get the feeling of the scene right by using only the available light. I'm interested in how other photographers do this. I like how the lights of the houses on the hills look like fireworks where the photographer used a longer shutter speed. It's a very warm, inviting picture.
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