Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

[AcadieLibre]

This may get your brains thinking this morning, I was posting something else somewhere else this morning and recalled this from the NY Times it was part of a discussion I was involved with there about two photographs from Roger Fenton taken during Crimean war called the Valley of the Shadow of Death taken in 1855 and the discussion is about which photo was taken first. I have an opinion but it is worth the read and there are two follow up pieces that you may also be interested in reading, the links for both of them are located at the under the banner for this article. Not sure if others will find it as fascinating as I did. I find all these articles I post relevant to photography and hope you don't mind my posting off topic photography stories.




http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/#more-12

[Marko]

I find this interesting as well (though I only read part 1 and not the comments...I'll get to the other parts soon) - please feel free to post whatever you like :)

Hmmm - For me both scenarios in the article are possible...and i've been thinking about this for 15 min.... what's your hunch?

[AcadieLibre]

Well I only read all the comments as I was part of the discussion, not sure I could go back and read them all now, a bit different when your involved and read them as they are being posted. This is my post from the discussion.

First view it is obvious that there are far more cannonballs in the ON photo then there are on the OFF photo. After finding the two highest resolution photos of both pictures on the web, I superimposed them on top of one another and made a comparison for the number of balls, the shadows and other land marks, craters, stones and so forth. The problem with the photos posted here is the colour, they are black and white which gives appearances of shadows and other discrepancies in the landscape that are not there in the sepia toned photos.

It would appear that the on photo was the result of a barrage from the Russians. If you look closely at the photo of the ON it is not only more shot but rocks and other landscape changes are present and obvious. With a closer look it seems that some of the shot has hit and impacted, some do not appear to have impacted but depending on various factors some may have been fired at a slightly less angled trajectory and also the density of the ground where the shot hit and caused some shot to roll rather than impact. I would point out all the discrepancies but that would be a very detailed paper rather than a comment.

It is a shame that some past photographers are questioned long after their passing with no firm evidence other than sheer speculation about their intent, character and integrity.