Styles / Early processes
Autochrome colour photography
- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.
Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.
Schematic, not to scale: worked out from the style’s choices. No set-up of this style has been rendered yet.
Kitty Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz, Kitty Stieglitz, c. 1907. Autochrome. Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection (CC0). Source: Kitty Stieglitz at Art Institute of Chicago
Cat and Sweetpeas
Moss (British), Cat and Sweetpeas, ca. 1907. Autochrome. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Robert Hershkowitz, in memory of Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr., 1987 (Open Access, public domain). Source: Cat and Sweetpeas at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The first practical colour photography: a glass plate coated with a mosaic of potato-starch grains dyed orange-red, green and blue-violet, developed into one positive transparency and seen against the light, in a diascope or projected. Exposures about thirty times longer than black and white kept the camera on a tripod and the subject still, so autochromists chose colourful, unmoving things: flowers and gardens, family portraits, people posed in streets. The grain screen gives soft, stippled colour, dark and greyed overall, with glowing reds and blues.
How the look is made
- Choose the subject for its colour: flowers, fruit, a striped dress, a red tablecloth or a flower cart, set against grey stone, sky or foliage that lets the colour glow.
- Shoot in bright daylight with the camera on a tripod and expose for a second or more; ask everyone to hold still, and accept that anyone who walks through becomes a transparent ghost.
- Let the colour screen show: a fine, even stipple over the whole frame, dark and greyed in skies and shadows, with full strength only in the reds, blues and greens of the subject.
- Make one positive and leave it as it came from the plate: no retouching, no hand-colouring, no combination printing; show the original by transmitted light, in a viewer or projected, one picture at a time.
- Place people calmly in their setting at eye level and middle distance: seated in a garden, at a table, beside a balustrade or a cart, looking into the lens or out of the frame.
Shoot sheet for your kit
Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.
Light
Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.
- Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.
- Shadow edges
- Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.
- Shadow depth
- Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).
How the style is lit
- Bright outdoor daylight, summer sun or a bright overcast sky, because even a sunlit landscape needed about a second.
- Sitters in open shade, on a porch or by a large window, holding still for several seconds against a plain wall or a garden.
- Low sun behind a figure in a garden or meadow, so hair and a pale dress glow against darker foliage.
This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Lens and settings
Start at
On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.
- The style’s f/6.3 on 9 × 12 cm gives about the depth of field of f/1.8 on full frame.
- Then
- 40–55 mm · f/5–f/8 · 1–30 s · ISO 0.1–0.3 on 9 × 12 cm, documented. Coe: 1–2 s at f/8 for a summer landscape in midday sun, 10–30 s at f/5 for a portrait in a well-lit studio, on a tripod behind the orange-yellow filter; ISO 0.1–0.3 worked out from those times. 9 × 12 to 13 × 18 cm plates with normal lenses (inferred).
- White balance
- Balanced to daylight by an orange-yellow filter in the camera that held back the plate's excess blue and violet; exposed in daylight, so lamp colour hardly ever appears.
- Focal length
- Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.
- Angle
- The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
- Distance
- Whole figures and their immediate surroundings.
- Balance
- The subject in the middle, the frame balanced around it.
- Crop & fill
- The subject shown small within its setting, which explains it.
- Duration
- An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.
Direct
Sitters hold a pose for one to several seconds: seated upright in a garden chair or on a bench, standing beside a table or a flower cart, children with flowers or fruit held in their laps. Faces are calm and unsmiling and many look straight into the lens; in art autochromes figures sit in profile or turn away, gazing into a garden or landscape.
- Body position
- On a chair or stool, back straight, hands and feet placed: the formal sitting.
- Head & gaze
- Looking straight into the camera, so the subject meets the viewer’s eye.
- Arms & hands
- Hands busy with a prop or a tool: flowers, a phone, a cup, a cigarette, an instrument, one’s own work.
- Line & energy
- Rigid and motionless, sometimes braced against a head rest or gripping a chair: held for a long exposure or a solemn occasion.
- Expression
- Unsmiling, composed and blank: the face gives nothing away.
- Without a pose
- No people at all, or people so small or far off that their pose does not read (hands alone are Hands alone).
- With the sitter
- The sitter arranged and still, facing the camera.
Style the set
Choose things for their colour: red apples, a bunch of flowers, a striped or red dress, set in a lap or against grey stone and green leaves. Otherwise people wear their own clothes, everyday or festive, in their own gardens, homes and streets, and nothing else is arranged.
- Clothes
- What people happened to be wearing; nothing chosen for the picture.
- Set & props
- Props chosen and placed for colour, texture and story: linen, ceramics, cutlery, flowers, scattered ingredients.
- How much is styled
- Nothing dressed, made up, moved or added for the picture.
Finish
- Colour
- The colour of ordinary things treated as the point of the picture. Colour held back towards grey. Pale, light colours.
- Film
- Transparencies: dense, saturated colour.
- Texture
- Film grain or noise you can see at normal size.
- Post-production
- Nothing changed beyond exposure and development.
- Shown as
- Each picture stands on its own.
Stay away from hand-coloured, painted, scratched or drawn on, heavy retouching, composite & montage, frozen instant, snapshot, direct on-camera flash, clean & noiseless, hyper-detailed, fast, full-body movement and laughing.
Before you shoot it
Autochromes show real people: children photographed by their parents (Kitty Stieglitz, Heinrich Kühn's children), street vendors and passers-by posed in front of shops, soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. Albert Kahn wanted in 1912 to record 'practices and modes of human activity' whose 'fatal disappearance' he thought only a matter of time, and his operators and National Geographic's photographers pictured people abroad and in the colonies for European and American viewers. Jules Gervais-Courtellemont's plate of women and men in Bou Saada, French Algeria (c. 1909–1911), names no one: its original caption reads only 'Biskra, Oulad Nail', and the museum's revised caption still calls them 'dancers and musicians of the Ouled Naïl tribe', a label that, in the words of the photography historian Michel Mégnin, had become 'no more than a virtual tribe whose name signifies only a local prostitute'. National Geographic's own editor wrote in 2018 that for decades the magazine 'pictured "natives" elsewhere as exotics'.
Photographs that define it
From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.
Une marchande de fleurs, en face du 53 rue Cambon (A flower seller opposite 53 rue Cambon)
Auguste Léon, Une marchande de fleurs, en face du 53 rue Cambon, Paris, 25 June 1918. Autochrome. Département des Hauts-de-Seine, musée Albert-Kahn, Archives de la Planète, A 14 361 (CC0, public domain). Source: Une marchande de fleurs, en face du 53 rue Cambon (A flower seller opposite 53 rue Cambon) at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine (Archives de la Planète)
Olga Victorovna Dmitrieff
Constantin Mitrofanovitsh Flórinsky (Russian), Olga Victorovna Dmitrieff, 1907. Autochrome. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1961 (Open Access, public domain). Source: Olga Victorovna Dmitrieff at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
With other styles
Pairs with Pictorialism. The same Photo-Secessionists made both in 1907; borrow pictorialism's backlit gardens, pale dresses and averted gazes, but let the colour of the plate itself, not a hand-worked monochrome print, carry the mood.
The opposite: Yokohama photography. Yokohama colourists painted watercolour onto albumen prints by hand, while an autochrome's colour comes from the plate; never paint tints on to imitate it, choose coloured subjects and let the grain screen render them.
The opposite: New Color photography. Both make the colour of ordinary things the subject, but New Color made crisp, dense colour prints of everyday America; choose the autochrome when the brief wants soft, greyed, stippled colour, still posed subjects and a single glowing transparency.
Pairs with Light and airy. Both love gardens, soft colour and tender family pictures; when a light-and-airy brief should feel older and quieter, swap high-key overexposure and lens flare for the autochrome's darker, greyed colour, stillness and fine stippled grain.
Sources
- Autochrome Lumière, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re (French patent 339,223 of 17 December 1903; first marketed 1907; starch grains dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet, 5–10 µm, about four million per square inch, gaps filled with lampblack, panchromatic emulsion, plate exposed glass side to the lens behind an orange-yellow filter, reversal to a positive; exposures much longer than black and white, needing a tripod; diascope, hand stereoscope and projection; the mosaic screen made the finished image 'very dark overall', so bright light and special viewing arrangements were needed; hazy, pointillist, 'dream-like' colour; 'immensely popular among enthusiastic amateur photographers'; more serious 'artistic' practitioners lost interest, largely because of its inflexibility, as it allowed little of the manipulation Pictorialists loved; Filmcolor 1931, Lumicolor 1933, Alticolor 1952–1955; Kahn's 72,000 plates; National Geographic's 15,000 plates; Genthe's 384 plates at the Library of Congress; Bassetlaw Museum, Retford, holds over 700 autochromes by Stephen Pegler, taken between 1910 and the early 1930s)
- 'Autochromes: the dawn of colour photography', National Science and Media Museum blog, 5 June 2009: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/autochromes-the-dawn-of-colour-photography/ (first public demonstration on 10 June 1907 at the offices of L'Illustration; on sale in Britain from October 1907; exposures about thirty times those of monochrome plates, at least one second for a summer landscape in midday sun; held to the light, viewed in diascopes with a mirror or projected by magic lantern; 'A colourful subject was paramount', flowers the most frequent subject, portraiture popular; 'the vast majority of autochromes were taken by amateur photographers'; 6,000 plates a day by 1913; artistic photographers soon abandoned it; it dominated colour photography for nearly 30 years; Filmcolor sheet film, which it dates to 1932)
- 'The Lumière brothers' Autochrome process', Swiss Camera Museum, Vevey: https://cameramuseum.ch/en/discover/permanent-exhibition/the-plate-era/the-lumiere-brothers-autochrome-process (patent of 17 December 1903; potato starch particles coloured blue, green and orange-red; production from 1907; decline from the 1930s)
- 'Pictures from Potatoes: Autochromes', American Museum of Photography: https://photographymuseum.com/?p=6018 (unveiled at the Photo-Club de Paris on 10 June 1907; Steichen and Stieglitz in Paris, Steichen began making autochromes at once; Stieglitz's letter to the journal Photography: 'soon the world will be color-mad'; diascopes)
- Archives de la Planète, Département des Hauts-de-Seine open data (musée départemental Albert-Kahn): https://opendata.hauts-de-seine.fr/explore/assets/archives-de-la-planete/ (a dozen operators sent out between 1909 and 1931 to about fifty countries; scientific direction by Jean Brunhes, 1869–1930; 72,000 autochromes, 4,000 stereographs and about 100 hours of film; Kahn's statement of January 1912 on recording ways of life before their 'disparition fatale'; operators including Auguste Léon, Frédéric Gadmer, Georges Chevalier, Stéphane Passet, Fernand Cuville and Paul Castelnau; plates mostly released under CC0 or CC BY)
- Archives de la Planète, Wikipédia (French): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archives_de_la_Plan%C3%A8te (1909–1931; Brunhes scientific director from 1912; operators named; collection at the musée départemental Albert-Kahn)
- Becky Little, 'These Beautiful Antique Photos Were Made With Potato Starch', National Geographic, 31 January 2015: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/150131-pictures-autochrome-color-photography-history-people-culture (first natural-colour photograph in the magazine in 1914, an autochrome of a flower garden in Belgium; almost 15,000 glass autochrome plates in the archive; long exposures made subjects hold still and blurred those who moved; used into the early 1930s, Kodachrome by 1938)
- Lotte, Heinrich Kühn, September 1907, autochrome, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/54698 (Kühn making autochromes in 1907)
- Kitty Stieglitz, Alfred Stieglitz, c. 1907, and Frank Eugene Seated at Table, 1907, autochromes, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/77269 and https://www.artic.edu/artworks/77261
- Metropolitan Museum of Art collection records for autochromes (Open Access API): Edward Steichen, Rodin – The Eve, 1907 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269812), with his 1907 autochromes of Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Käsebier; Heinrich Kühn, [Mary Warner in Back Light], 1908 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/286374), and his autochromes of his children, c. 1908–12; Alvin Langdon Coburn, George Bernard Shaw, 1907; Adolf de Meyer, Tamara Karsavina, c. 1908; George Seeley, [Flowers], 1908; Arnold Genthe, [Pan-Pacific International Exposition], 1915
- Danseuses et musiciens de la tribu des Ouled Naïl, Jules Gervais-Courtellemont, Bou Saada, Algeria, c. 1909–1911, musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Archives de la Planète, A 83: https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/document/danseuses-et-musiciens-de-la-tribu-des-ouled-nail/617a7a3bcf8b8968b33470ce (original caption 'Biskra, Oulad Nail'; revised caption 'Danseuses et musiciens de la tribu des Ouled Naïl'; no person named; CC0); Tranchée de première ligne au Hamel, Stéphane Passet, 9 August 1915, A 5940: https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/document/tranchee-de-premiere-ligne-au-hamel/617a7a40cf8b8968b3371a62 (soldiers in a front-line trench of the First World War)
- Susan Goldberg, 'For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It', National Geographic, 12 March 2018: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/from-the-editor-race-racism-history (the magazine 'pictured "natives" elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages')
- Michel Mégnin, 'Icons of the South – Portraits of Ouleds-Nails (Algeria 1860–1910)', introduction, Luminous-Lint virtual exhibit, Toulouse, December 2011: https://luminous-lint.com/phoenix/virtual_exhibits/single/_THEME_Portrait_19thc_Algerian_Ouled_Nails_01/introduction/ (the designation 'Ouled Nail' became 'no more than a virtual tribe whose name signifies only a local prostitute'; Émile Fréchon, in 1892 articles on Biskra compiled for Jules Gervais-Courtellemont: 'Ouled Nail does not denote a race, but a profession'; poses 'favoured by the barrack-room', at a rate 'accelerated by colonisation')
- Stephen Pegler, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pegler (1852–1937, British industrialist in the rubber industry, 'best known for his autochromes', from about 1910 to his death; everyday life in and around Retford: picnics, processions, sports, shop windows, markets, portraits of his family and local people; Bassetlaw Museum collection)
- Autochrome, Timeline of Historical Film Colors (Barbara Flueckiger), quoting Brian Coe, Colour Photography: The First Hundred Years 1840–1940 (1978): https://filmcolors.org/?p=1336 (a normal summer landscape by midday sun one to two seconds at f/8; a typical portrait in a well-lit studio ten to thirty seconds at f/5; plates loaded glass to the front)
- Colour photography in the Asia Pacific region, Robert Deane: https://mail.photo-web.com.au/robertdeane/papers/Colour-photography.htm (the emulsion some fifty times slower than contemporary monochrome emulsions; average exposure in full sunlight one second at f/8)
- Autochrome Lumière, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re (much longer exposures than black-and-white, so tripods were needed; orange-yellow filter in the camera; plate loaded glass side to the lens)
- Une marchande de fleurs, en face du 53 rue Cambon, Auguste Léon, musée départemental Albert-Kahn: https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/document/une-marchande-de-fleurs-en-face-du-53-rue-cambon/617a7a40cf8b8968b33738ed (autochrome on glass, 9 × 12 cm)
- Kitty Stieglitz, Alfred Stieglitz, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/77269 (autochrome, plate 17.9 × 12.7 cm)
- Autochrome Lumière, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re (an orange-yellow filter in the camera was required to block ultraviolet and restrain the violet and blue light to which the emulsion was overly sensitive; a system the Lumière brothers carefully balanced for use with natural daylight)