It was taken on a wet plate camera (capturing images on sensitised glass pates), which has remarkable resolution, typically far beyond most smaller cameras even today.
The photo was artificially lit, most likely with flash powder or magnesium ribbon. Those create incredible amounts of light - obnoxiously so, which is why they were replaced by safer flash bulbs and later on electronic flash in subsequent decades.
The light would have been more than enough to illuminate the people standing and posing for the photograph in that enclosed room.
I wonder how different things would have been if we were not able to capture the past 100-150 years so well on monochrome film. What a remarkable time to be alive, and to have been able to look back on the past using a mostly-reliable and truthful medium - now long since lost with the advent of digital imaging.
Flash photography was a thing then, this photograph looks like a Flash is illuminating it.
> through the 1920s, flash photography normally meant a professional photographer sprinkling powder into the trough of a T-shaped flash lamp, holding it aloft, then triggering a brief and (usually) harmless bit of pyrotechnics.
Yes, it looks like a flash was used. A pyrotechnic "big chemical flash" was the standard kind in 1921, so that too.
I am not sure if it was "bounced against a wall to soften" or not, I don't think that our experience about what an electric flash looks like with and without bounce will apply, the pyrotechnic flash won't look exactly the same. The pyrotechnic won't be such a point light source for a start. So I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that there has to be a deliberate bounce.
It was taken on a wet plate camera (capturing images on sensitised glass pates), which has remarkable resolution, typically far beyond most smaller cameras even today.
The photo was artificially lit, most likely with flash powder or magnesium ribbon. Those create incredible amounts of light - obnoxiously so, which is why they were replaced by safer flash bulbs and later on electronic flash in subsequent decades.
The light would have been more than enough to illuminate the people standing and posing for the photograph in that enclosed room.
I wonder how different things would have been if we were not able to capture the past 100-150 years so well on monochrome film. What a remarkable time to be alive, and to have been able to look back on the past using a mostly-reliable and truthful medium - now long since lost with the advent of digital imaging.
Also, most of the people seem to have been posing for the shot, which means they would have been relatively still.
Some moved.
Flash photography was a thing then, this photograph looks like a Flash is illuminating it.
> through the 1920s, flash photography normally meant a professional photographer sprinkling powder into the trough of a T-shaped flash lamp, holding it aloft, then triggering a brief and (usually) harmless bit of pyrotechnics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(photography)
Maybe they used one of those big chemical flashes bounced against a wall to soften it.
Yes, it looks like a flash was used. A pyrotechnic "big chemical flash" was the standard kind in 1921, so that too.
I am not sure if it was "bounced against a wall to soften" or not, I don't think that our experience about what an electric flash looks like with and without bounce will apply, the pyrotechnic flash won't look exactly the same. The pyrotechnic won't be such a point light source for a start. So I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that there has to be a deliberate bounce.
From a balcony. I don't think Morey bounced it. Yes, magnesium powder I assume. No flashbulbs until a few years after 1921.