historic photograph: real or fake?

[Mike Anderson]

Incidently, there are lots more which don't come up in the index so easily, for example

http://museumofnyc.doetech.net/Voyag...8/Z0010866.jpg

These are varied.

That one's a different track. This must have been a popular sport/exhibition: bicyclists spinning around a tiny banked track. Maybe the chain driven bicycle was new and this was to promote "the bicycle of the future".

...Mike

[rdenney]

But just turning the wheel with the bike tilted that much isn't going to solve the center of gravity problem. Regardless these guys are defying gravity if they are not moving.

It will if the bike has a fixed gear. If you can pedal the bike in both directions, then you can rock the pedals back and forth with the front wheel turned, and it will tilt you back and forth over the tire contact patches. That's how it's done on a track bike.

On a road bike with a freewheel, that trick doesn't work. For that, you need to move your body back and forth, but it's still inherently unstable. I bet you've fallen if you have attempted track stands at red lights a lot. I don't know a single person who does it regularly who has not fallen, including me. It's one of the standard embarrassments for bikies.

I have for the last dozen years or so used Speedplay pedals and no longer worry about unmanning myself when clipping back in after the light goes green, so now in my unbalanced old age I just put a foot down when I stop. And even doing that I occasionally fall--the other way. Sheesh.

Rick "not exactly putting a lot of miles on the bike, though" Denney

[Kirk Gittings]

I bet you've fallen if you have attempted track stands at red lights a lot.

You think?

[archer]

Has anyone noticed the diffuse shadows? If this was taken with direct light source or even flash powder, wouldn't the shadows be much crisper and if taken with available light, a fast film would be needed to stop the action with a shutter speed fast enough to arrest motion without blur?
Denise Libby

[Mike Anderson]

Has anyone noticed the diffuse shadows? If this was taken with direct light source or even flash powder, wouldn't the shadows be much crisper and if taken with available light, a fast film would be needed to stop the action with a shutter speed fast enough to arrest motion without blur?
Denise Libby

There's multiple light sources - see the slat shadows on the floor inside the track. This is quite the mysterious photograph.

...Mike

[lostjr]

I take it that there were not necessarily technical limitations to stopping this sort of action at the time, although:

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagot....&pqatl=google

In the end, I think it is staged (a) because of the three people on the track being in the same position on more than one frame. Numerous ideas about wire trips, multiple cameras and simultaneous exposures raise the question of why would you go to the trouble for some publicity photos?

(b) Context. At this time, the Byron people did theatrical photos. I suspect posed was the standard way of doing those. There was no scientific interest in stopping action, and in the interest of getting a quality image that would serve promotional purposes, the emphasis would have been on good lighting, and _being sure_ of getting people in the position you wanted. Rigging and retouching would not have been that difficult, and was probably common.

[Sevo]

There was no scientific interest in stopping action,

There was - Muybridge, Anschütz and others had already pioneered that decades earlier. But advertising was straightforward, nobody would have bothered to create (fake) scientific imagery in promotional photographs for a theatrical performance...