Super Expensive Photos - Objectivity 55 

Keith: "They are beautiful. I'm very fond of these images. They're really quite evocative." Brady: "Cool!" :-)

I would so follow a youtube vlogging channel of Keith

I'd love to hear from Keith on how new submissions get processed for the collection in terms of recorded, labelled, packed and stored.

It's sad when people don't really understand how massively important the invention of photographic image capture has been for historic reference. It's not just a photo of a tree. It is exactly what that tree looked like in that year and moment in time, not altered by any artist's brush or impression. We don't have photos of vikings, gladiators or Sir Isaac Newton. Just artworks, written descriptions and preserved objects, pieced together.

I love how the photographers had an innate flair for photography.

Selfie with a document describing the world's first photography. Love it.

Very cool! Love coming here to learn new things and see cool objects. Thanks for making the videos Brady and Keith!

The images are spectacular! Keith didn't mention it on camera, but there were few enlargers in the 1800's and prints were made usually by placing a negative directly on the paper. So most likely the images that Keith was showing were from negatives of that size. Because there was no enlarging, the full quality of the negative comes through on the print. Fox Talbot did patent an enlarger in the mid 1800's but they were not used much because of the long exposure times required with the print materials of the day and the lack of reliable bright light sources (no electric lights yet). I would love to see higher resolution digitial captures of these images. Any chance of the Society allowing that?

Probably one of the best objectivity videos ever. Some of those pictures are absolutely breathtaking, and the brady/keith synergy has never been so good.

just imagine being one of those guys under a tree if you told them that many years from now electric signals discerned to two different binary states sent over large swaths of Asymmetric digital subscriber line to a place that would turn those states into numbers and those numbers would be turned into a color on a part of an array of small light emitting diodes to make a series of rapidly changing images,captured by means of someone exposing a light sensitive object to a scene of interest which happens to be of an scene derived by similar technique of those very men under a tree you might blow their minds

Out of curiosity, would those actually be for sale? If someone approached the Royal Society with half a million pounds for the photo, could they actually buy it? I'd assume not, but if not then what's the point of getting it priced in the first place? Is it just for insurance purposes?

Brady, the next time you get a chance, you should go get some modern stills and time lapse footage of whichever of the scenes in these old pictures can be located. The places that bookend the history of photography!

This is literally the first paper on humanity's first suksessfull attempt to freeze and capture time and space... Worth more then 1 million dollars in my opinion.

Are there high resolution digital versions of things like this? It would be great if everyone could view items from the archive online.

With just one of those photos in my possession, I could afford the most basic rudimentary bare-bones healthcare plan, here in the United States. Man that'd be a heck of a treat, access to basic healthcare.

The very first one is absolutely gorgeous.

these photos are absolutely astonishing! They look like photos from today.

Loving Keith's jacket! And of course those landscapes are amazing too.

is that a portrait of Keith by the door?

My favourite was that cathedral-esque building.

One of my favorites so far, thanks Brady.

Those photos are beautiful! Thanks for sharing Brady and Keith

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing Brady!

This is probably my favourite episode so far! I love those images

Love the Hello Internet t-shirt subtly hidden under brady's shirt :)

This is my favorite YT channel. Always something to amaze and inspire. Many thanks!

I'm amazed at the quality of these. They are amazingly detailed and beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.

:D I love seeing Brady & Keith do amazing things. The Royal Society is so lucky to have so many incredible papers & objects.

Beautiful objects, thank you for sharing them with us, and thank you Brady for including the moment when you were speechless! I think that moment illustrated very well just how impressive these (and other Objectivity objects) really are.

These are much better quality and sharp picture than most of the stupid cellphone cameras.

Fascinating, but ridiculous that they have so much value.

loove these photogenic drawings!

This is really interesting, photography has come a long way but those photographs are so beautiful.

I suggest this shows that a quality image is more likely when you know it will be a unique opportunity, and it will be pretty expensive. A lot more thought will thus be invested in the making of it. I know that a lot of my old 35mm film pics, often with a tripod, seem to be better than most of my digital camera ones, and definitely better than a bunch of my phone pics.

Wonderful!

Do a series showing a interesting thing from every country or from a personality of every country. An archive so old has to have at least a piece from every country in the world. The more interesting angle would be to find personalities from every country that collaborated/donated to the Royal Society... Basically a friend list. :)

Thanks for bringing all these objects to light so that we can appreciate them :)

Speaking of photographs, Brady you should post more pics on your Twitter. They are always very good and rather interesting.

favourite episode. great photos. thanks bois

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing!

You guys just keep on giving. And yes! Very beautiful photos.

Brady, your coloration in this video is amazing! Just beautiful, good job man.

I have goosebumps, such history!

so fascinating!

I am loving this channel! I love this video especially because I am huge into photography!

That selfie was meta.

Awesome!

Could you do a supplemental video interviewing Keith? I'm an Archivist at a college in the US and I wonder what it takes to be a librarian in the UK, especially somewhere cool like the Royal Society.

How do you put a price on these kinds of objects?

Wow, half a million pounds. That's enough money to pay for all my present and future tuition fees. I could afford almost five PhDs with one single photo.

Thanks for sharing these! The photographs are beautiful. I'm surprised they were so large as well.

This is so interesting! If you consider how much time it took to develop the basic visual language of movies, it's obvious that this was a much quicker process with photos. It would be interesting to know if the first photographers had at least some training as painters because the same basic ways to compose a picture can be used in both mediums.

Those are incredible

What a tie!

I have a serious issue with these videos..... there's not enough views I simply love this stuff! and to think maybe only 50 years ago this stuff would have been really only bee visible to royalty or extreme intelligentsia.

"I'm quite fond of these images, they're really very evocative." "cool"

Note there are no people in those scenes (apart from one). This is because exposure times would have been measured in minutes.

amazing

That's _really_ cool! Hipsters, you're doing it wrong! Drop Instagram and bring out the silver nitrate.

Sad to see that this channel isn't really taking off - I think it might be due to the varying fascination of the object presented in each video. I don't really have a suggestion for this though - I only wish for another of Keith's librarian-stories.

best video of the lot !!

Awesome! :D

Your videos are so enjoyable to watch, please can you do 10 minute videos on subjects that are picked?

Cool !

Brady, I hope you didn't send that photo to Grey. He wouldn't know what the point is, because you failed to point at the thing you want him to notice.

Fantastic! are these pictures (and other items of higher value) off limits when you visit the royal society? Or can you request them just like any thing? :)

I'm having trouble finding scans of these photos, but they fall under the reference number MS/784, and you can view the descriptions of each on the Royal Society's website.

The first picture of lanscape from the Pyrenees, is the Cirque de Garvarnie. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_de_Gavarnie)

Brady ... speechless

Could you mention something about the processing of the prints - how they were developed and whether they were fixed?

I did not know that the Royal Society had pieces of their collection appraised.

3:00, that mountains landscape, isn't it the circle de Gavarnie?

touching

Somebody's vacation photos. Boooriing... (Just joking, of course.)

I would so love to be able to purchase reproductions of some of these!

About 5:56 Keith says : " Because they hadn't had any light exposure, of course they'd been preserved beautifully." So will these images fade away in time due to light exposure ? How long would that take ?

Do the rooms wherein these kinds of things are shown or looked at have special lights, or filters on the windows, to help preserve the images?

To be fair, the half-million pound one does look like it could've been a multi-million pound painting :p

Does anyone know if there are any high-res versions of those images available to look at?

for the first photos they made sure it was all HD , even if its all grey scale

I don't remember if you've done this already but maybe you could do a video about Keith's favorite object? He said he was quite fond of these photos so I'm curious about if there exists an object that Keith is particularly fond of and takes out from time to time for his own viewing pleasure? Since he's the expert this could only be quite interesting.

I'm a large proponent of mass scanning projects so the details of these documents can be properly indexed and distributed digitally, but I'd worry about scanning pictures like those--would the scanner lights hurt them or change them in any way, I wonder?

2:30 Looks like you are sniffing the glue...

Interesting, they don't usually mention the monetary value of the objects.

See if they can dig up the first ever selfie!

is it a half million pounds because maybe the town no longer exists, maybe through war - or is it because the high contrast/sharp image quality?

I like the HI T-shirt ;)

Is it known which particular village from France is on the most expensive photo?

OLDEST tilted-back architecture photo ? photo of church has columns that seem TOO parallel. difficult to measure from video, though.

WOOHOO!!! PRE-301...which doesn't mean anything anymore.

Keith here looking like Morpheus if the Brittish had made their own version of The Matrix

Are there any scans of those pictures?

Keith mentioned that one of the prints was a salt print. Do you have any information on what kind of process was used for the others? I'm guessing albumen prints by how they look but it would be exciting if there were any carbon prints in there as well.

Does anyone know why so many of these old books have that weird half page thing where the bottom is chopped off?

Have these prints been numerized? I would really like to make a print of those, as they must be public domain... Can someone provide a link if it exists?

Brady's voice sounds like he's facing a cold

So Keith says that they have been preserved due to lack of light exposure. How does looking at them now affect them? Is there any treatment that can be done in order to preserve them for viewing? Cool video!

How can we find these photos online ? Would love to maybe even use them as inspiration.

Thank you. now i have a screenshotted background worth 500.000 pounds!

these photos look as if they were documenting rampant deforestation .