This (above) is the way it used to be!
This is the way it is now. What happened? Where did the fun go? Is color photography responsible? The lighting? Maybe the bottom pictures were flattened out with a long lens and the top ones shot with a normal 50mm one. Maybe the top ones were shot with variable lighting and the bottom with one technique for all. Does anyone here know about photography? What's responsible for the difference?
27 comments:
They just don't make noggins like they used to!
See ya
Steve
It's the evolution of the graduation photo. If there was a way to show a progression-timeline of yearbook photos over the past 40 or so years, I bet you could see a definite gradual change. The top one you got there, looks just like my parents' yearbooks. The bottom one looks like a corporate employee directory!!
I see this got published a few times. I'm moving my comment here since this one's been commented on more.
That top one is really from a yearbook? I'm surprised because the pictures are so horribly laid out. Maybe that's what is fun about it. I'm wondering if the fun you're thinking about is in the page layout as opposed to the photography. If it's just the photography, then a good comparison could be had be normalizing the bottom page: cropping the shots tighter around the head, making the pictures not quite rectangular, making them black and white.
Perhaps that's just it, though, that's the fun. The top page just says "rough" everywhere. The pictures aren't lined up, they aren't even rectangles, there's noise everywhere. Some people would call the bottom one more refined. I guess slick and refined doesn't quite scream fun like rough and quick.
Perhaps by tomorrow I could make the bottom one look like the top one. That'd be fun.
I think the first photo just came from an unorganized school... Maybe the faculty sponsor died.
Private high school yearbooks from the '60s have different design but are no less professional/organized than current public school yearbooks. And class photos (the kind with collected individual headshots on one giant page) from my law school had a standard level of professionalism from at least the '30s onwards.
Thanks guys! No, I wasn't mad, just frustrated! I guess Blogger takes some getting used to. Sorry if I accidentally deleted a couple of comments!
-Eddie
I think its that kids these days don't wear those krazy nerd glasses anymore.
eddie! alright here's why i think the black and white one has more awesome.
in anything visual, the most important things for appealingness are (in order from most important to least)
1. shape
2. tone
3. color being least important
The old year book picture has GREAT shapes (silhouettes)becasue of the painstakingly intricate hairstyles, plus the glasses are great shapes too!!!!
The old year book is HEAVY constrast making shapes obvious and exciting, almost graphic!
The new yearbook, in comparison, has almost NO interesting shapes and absolutely no constrast... plus the colors are bland! if it was all black in white with the old three areas of red theory, it would be more exciting!
Other reasons why BW one is better
1. the novelty of VINTAGE: it's another era! it's like they are in costume
2. nerdier and uglier too, probably because they are closer pictures and in high constrast you cant really hide slack jaws or buldgey eyes...so it's funny
3. people are looking in different directions with totally different expressions, for more fun, almost like they are actors
done!
Hi Eddie,
You may have a point about the lens distortion. But I think todays photograpgers have taken the Spumco theory that everyone is ugly close up, and decided that eveyone is more normal if you step two feet further away. Whats missing in todays yearbooks is a photographer with the balls, or the ovaries, to step up and push in on the wonders that the human head holds.
Vincent
Now excuse me while I go dive into the pool of women that I have hidden in the secret chamber of love behind my office.
Could I knab a mint?
Hey thats my dad on the top row!! Just kidding.. what happened to hand colored photography? dont see that much anymore..
I think modern people are just boring in general. I mean, unless you're a cartoonist, or a monkey, or a midget, what's the point?
I've always noticed the same thing! Looking through my parents yearbooks were always a blast. Horn rim glasses everywhere!
THe top photos are cropped head to top-of-shoulder while the newer ones are cropped more head to torso.
Also, the posing in older photos usually tends to have people looking off camera. Newer poses tend to have the subject look at camera.
Backgrounds were also very non-descript in the old days: probably not middle gray. Now graduation photos are shot on middle gray to blue to anything else.
Rim lighting on the back of the head also changes the feel of the shot.
And for the record, most photographers now days prefer that people take thier glasses off to avoid glare issues.
People who light for color also tend to get less of a tonal range if they haven't done a lot of B&W work. Contrast is the key to depth!
I was editor of my high school yearbook, back in the beloved day of black and white. Natural light was our God. We also used a little thing called negative space in page layout composition. Any large, modern high school yearbook today assaults the reader with NO negative space and full color on every single slick page! It was partly due to economic reasons, but we were forced to use color only for emphasis in the few 16 page signatures of the book where we could afford it. As for the difference in the way people look now vs. then, that would be due to the elimination of polio.
Holy crap those people are ugly in that first pic are ugly. Youch.
Everyone go watch Christmas in Tattertown on youtube!
Gee...I posted quite a nice long post and it's--gone! Wha' happen?
I always used to notice, in the 70s, that people with afros got short-changed in yearbooks. The photographer would always try to get the entire head in the photo. If the subject's hair was big, the face ended up very small. Does that still happen?
In addition to what's been said I'd add that part of the attraction comes from the fact that everybody in the old book seems to have personality traits. I see faces that are nerdy, avaricious, slutty, wildly optomistic, skeptical, fearful, confident, predatory, idealistic, etc. Also the hair dominates in a way that it doesn't in the newer photos.
Marlo's (and others')comments about the tone were certainly justified. Some pictures are dark overall and some light, with some interesting mixtures. Sometimes a girl with a white blouse and dark hair will be photographed against a nearly white background. In this set-up, only the head has tone, making it appear to float in the air...but it works!
If I were a photographer I'd emphasize the dominant characteristic. People with big foreheads would get downshots with the top of the head leaning toward cam a bit. It's not that I want to hold people up to ridicule. I'd be thinking of the impact of all the pictures seen together, of the suggestion that humanity is various and infinitely interesting (OK, and funny-looking).
BTW, Chris was right. The photos on the top pages were a best-of culled from from 3 or 4 old yearbook pages. The point is still valid though. Any of the pictures I didn't use were still superior to the ones on the newer page.
Jenny, I'm soooo sorry! If you posted a comment this morning then I may have accidentally deleted it. Aaaarrgh!
-Eddie
I think I have a few ideas on why the pictures are so different from about a 40-year time period.
1) I remember when I was in school, my school was involved in yearbook competitions. One of the rules of the competition is all the pictures had to look the same - no hands in the picture, headshots only, no additional backgrounds or props in the picture, etc. If we turned in a picture that didn't meet that criteria, they wouldn't publish the pic!
2) I think that photographers are looking for the best shot - the best position, the best lighting, the best angle, etc. Many photographers will take the picture for the yearbook for free, but in order to make more money, they sell photo packages to the parents. If the person doesn't look his/her best in the pic, I don't think the parents will purchase a package.
3) Technology! With the latest technology, it's so much easier to soften, airbrush, and remove flaws than it was in the past.
-- J
Yeh i absolutely agree with the color contrast theory.
The black and white had more focus on tone to compensate for lack of color whereas now they just want to balance colors. I think back then they must have made much better use of bouncelight whereas today they use the colors to paint an image rather than use tone aswell.
I have a picture of my mom in the early 70s in BW. its a front on shot but its as 3D as a katie rice 3/4 drawing.
Jennifer: Maybe you're on to something. Maybe the pictures would improve (get funnier, more character)if photographers weren't forced to pander to parents. Hmmmm.....
Great theories - I think it has to do with a desire of everyone today to be "cool" - in the '60's yearbook, people are unashamedly dorky. The modern people all have the same expression, nervously smiling in a silent plea for acceptance, barely concealing their feelings of fear of inadequacy and the possibility that they may be criticized for having opinions which are not politically correct.
In short, the '60's people are Americans unapologetically basking in the glory of post-war prosperity, feeling no need to be ashamed of who they are. (Look at the guy with the skinny head in the middle - no one today would dare to look like that!) The newer people are desperately trying to "fit in" and not appear too "diferent".
Kent B
Maybe I've been staring at the bottom set for too long, but they're starting to look all weird and funny as well now.
Aren't humans cool? :)
Well, shucks...my original post wasn't worth repeating--so naturally, I'll repeat it:
At Immacualte Heart(est. 1906)the hallways featured large portraits of every graduating class(the individual poses mounted in rows in each frame), and I loved looking at them; especially the 40s thru the early 60s(after that, things got less interesting, style-wise). ALL the girls--17 or 18--looked like WOMEN: hair, makeup all impeccably "done", and the photography was sublime. Very classy all 'round. The girls truly looked like movie stars(some were--or were the daughters of; Mary Tyler Moore smiled down from a 50s class).
I think that first "old yearbook" example must be a deliberately collaged goof page for something(just to look funny, perhaps); I don't believe all of them go together, plainly--in size & style of photo, and since all of them are goofy/ugly/weird-looking, I'm just sure it's a phony...not that that doesn't make it interesting! I've collected a few old yearbooks out of sheer interest really old--1920s & preWW1 Los Angeles are my forte), and there isn't a page without at least a couple of good-looking kids on it; if the entire class really looked like this page the race would have died out! ; )
I have some of Fred Moore's yearbooks, from 1927-28; he went to a huge high school...you'd love those photos. Anyway, you're right: class photography stinks now and has for at least 20 years or more. DULL!
Jenny: Pre-WW1!? Holy Mother of Pearl! I don't think I've ever seen a yearbook that old! I picture something dusty, bound in bison skin and wrapped with with poultices and charms.
I think a few of the girls are on the top page are good-looking, at least in an unconventional way. You want to talk to them to find out what their lives were like.
-Eddie
Uh...people no longer wanted to look like shit?
Hey, that guy on the second row owes me money!
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