SeeingEyeBlog

Here’s a dreamy photo of the ship I sail on, called the Surprise. It’s a replica of a 1805-era frigate in the British Royal Navy. In fact, it is the ship used in the making of Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World. We don’t get to drink while working aboard, but of course, neither do we get shot at.

While working in port today, we set most of our sails, and then I took a picture from across the street. We’ll be sailing this ship in the waters around San Diego, CA, on October 29th and November 5th. We also sail November 11th and 12th, this time alongside the Star of India.

Here’s another batch of stills. This time from the stills guy, not my crew….

Edward Hopper-esque diner set.

Kipleigh Brown as Hoyle.

Chase Masterson as Singer.

John Newton as Dudas.

Kip asking me if the camera is safe above her.

The paramedics arrive. Very cool ambulance we scored.

I had to walk backwards up an 8′ ladder at the end of this jib shot.

Kipleigh again.

Hoyle and Dudas on the roof, climactic scene.

What a doll.

I love black and white.

And I love filmmaking.

My best boy grip, Brian Griffith, shot this still while we were setting up a shot for the movie I’m shooting, Yesterday Was a Lie.

In my meager research into my previous post, I stumbled upon these pictures from Shackleton’s voyage to the South Pole, also in color. This site from PBS is also interesting.

Along the lines of my previous post about pre-revolutionary Russia, I’ve found some more interesting sites with WWI-era color photography. It is a notable time-period because it marks the end of pre-mechanized warfare. We still see soldiers on horseback. We see a kind of hybrid between millenia-old warfare techniques, and the new technology like zeppelins, machine-guns, and bi-planes. All of the “new” technologies we see in WWI seem to be jury-rigged in 1914-18, yet by the time WWII comes around, those technologies start to mature and are ready for carnage (not that WWI wasn’t bloody).

WWI, especially as seen through these color photographs, seems to herald the end of the simpler, classical, perhaps more innocent age. An age of military campaigns limited by natural phenomena (threats carrying only so far as an army’s horses could drink, etc). WWI seems to humbly inagurate a new age characterized by exponential increases in technology, weapon range, and efficiency.

In a way, these color photographs are the last documentation of a fair fight on earth.


No Mans Land Seen From A French Observation Post
Autochrome color picture, made on June 16, 1917


A Soldier’s Lunch at the Place Royal in the city of Reims, France.


Girl playing with her doll. Reims, 1917.