Before and After

The storm, that is. The latest cold snap set a new record for a low temperature in Boulder that had held for 98 years. The old record, from November 13, 1916, was -6 Fahrenheit, and the new record set this past Thursday on that same date was -11 Fahrenheit.

Now to some Before-After examples, starting with this week’s storm…

Here is an image from Monday, just as the storm was starting to roll in. Those pink, puffy, and cute, cumulus clouds to the right above the mountains announce the vanguard of the Arctic cold front.

Pink Sunrise. Boulder County, Colorado, 2014

Here is the same location just a few days later. The colors are still in the trees, but there is a new blanket of Styrofoam white. (I say Styrofoam because, when the temps get really low, that is the sound the snow makes when you walk on it.)

Winter Sunrise. Boulder County, Colorado, 2014

These Before-After sequences are fun. Ideally, you should use the exact same focal length and the same tripod holes when you do this so that the picture perspective is identical–which I obviously didn’t do in my photographs.

Here are three more examples of this “same tripod hole” idea:

The first is an interesting Before-During-After University of Colorado panorama quadriptych of this very same storm (apparently by one A. Checkov–finding the actual photographer in order to credit him/her was difficult). Click on THIS LINK at the imgur sharing site to be impressed–and to read the comments of Boulderite witnesses who left their homes in the morning in shorts only to freeze their tootsies and buns off by frame #4.

The second example…

If the Before-After idea still piques your pinkies, and Colorado is your haunt, take a look at a work by John Fielder: Colorado, 1870-2000. This is a collection of photographs by William Henry Jackson taken in the 1870s into the early 20th century and then, on the opposite page, the same exact scenes as photographed by Fielder roughly 100 years later. Spoiler: the changes aren’t always negative, nor are they all depictions of modern sprawl and growth. It’s amazing to see how badly the land was stripped of lumber for mines and houses and towns back in the late 19th century.

The essays in this book are also excellent–especially the main text by Ed Marston, a former small town newspaper editor/publisher with a distinct point-of-view when it comes to Colorado and the West.

(John Fielder also now has a Volume 2 of these comparison photographs as well as a Revisited book that covers the backstories of the making of the images.)

The third…

Grant Collier, also a noted and oft-published Colorado nature photographer, followed in the almost-literal footsteps of his Scottish great-great-grandfather to recreate the photographs in Colorado, Yesterday and Today. Like Fielder’s book, you have comparison images separated by 100+ years of time. Unlike Fielder’s book, there is a warm and welcome human interest element in Collier’s book as he is following the path of a family ancestor. Also unlike Fielder’s book, the modern images appear to have been taken from pretty much the exact same tripod holes as the original 19th century photographs. (Fielder is sometimes just tiny tad off in this respect, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.)

Bottom line: Both the Fielder and the Collier books are worth having in your photography library.

So there is your inspiration….now, go out and try your hand at a Before-After project!