tiara. so it was pretty neat political work. so i like to read about the process. i like to study history. i seem to learn better in history. ..

>> bassists u-haul. john guntzelman, the author. >> thank you for being here. >> get something to eat. [inaudible] >> certainly, absolutely. i prefer to use a sharpie because my handwriting is atrocious and this takes the edge off. who would you like -- >> taylor, it's me. i'm just a history about.

[inaudible conversations] thank you so much. enjoy the book. john, this is david powell. >> good to meet you. good to meet you. >> it was a long time. [inaudible conversations] >> well, to some extent, but not

really. it's more taking time to do it. it's just something you can't rash. inserted the different times. i started on the simpler one to the more complicated one. >> how did you do at? [inaudible conversations] >> well, it essentially was --

absolutely. getting more technical than i will later deceive me, i had to generate the motion picture phone. if you're familiar with that sort of stuff. sometimes it generated after the blue screen or the green screen. in this case, that never worked. i had to generate two trees dotted skies. so there have to be technical ways to get around it. at the same time, it had to be something that did not modify the photographs in any way because these are historic.

vicious way to do it. it became an issue of the most expedient way, but also the highest quality way. [inaudible] >> of course it was. you get a partially done in the stand back in like and then you keep moving and you get so involved in the minutia of it do once you are finished, you stand back and let data. [inaudible] so i've not experienced in doing a lot of trick work and stuff like that. that sort in the ad showed --

something that was not important. when i got in the pictures it was complex. finding ways to generate separation maps was the only way i could be elected because of the complexity. again, think of a tree against the blue sky. you seem trees and branches and i had to i had to figure it away to separate the tree from the background. so that is being was pretty involved. >> to jim and carol. jacob carol. and our easy. i am their camp commander.

>> all right. >> thank you so much. enjoy the boat. >> -- congressman from upstate new york. i told her was interested in history, particularly civil war. american history generally. >> is that i really enjoyed that. >> i've got to get up to my

district. >> that's wonderful. thank you so much. >> i am just thrilled. >> do you do it out of historical programs click >> this is the first. my background is cinematography. and i've had an interest in civil war history for a long, long time. it seemed like an excellent time to do a book like this for the sesquicentennial. we decided to do it. >> now, just a couple pictures for warner bros. and independence. certainly no historical measures. those are the big ones.

you never know. >> i just admire. [inaudible] >> you never know. i'm in ohio. i do end up traveling around for various jobs. i never know where i am going to be the next week. it changes so darn much. adding imac >> well, i will certainly look you up. >> so have you gone to in the sesquicentennial events? >> now, and it's actually here.

>> there's a huge amount this year. this summer is supposedly huge. a number of low has e-mailed me as the place to be. that's why it is so interest in getting the book into the bookstore, museum bookstore and also at the lincoln one. adding imac's >> it is, very much so. actually, my district does that.

harriet taubman trained to dedicate that. >> yeah, exactly. we did a lot of that. >> i'm actually very serious. it definitely makes it more alive. very nice to meet you. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> we have a great photographer in the personage of john guntzelman. he and i have worked together for many years, 20 years. their other great photographers. david powell is here. so i think you'll enjoy exactly what john has done. this started back in 2007.

john will tell you his side of the story. back in about 2009, john and i., who are together for a long time since i am working on this book on the civil war. and i said well, i'm on this counsel for george washington university and i happen to know a woman named kathy green who is a book age and. lo and behold, we put them together and we met for the first time tonight, which i found a mutual. but i remember riding with kathy. i drove her to union station to go that to new york. had she said paul -- this is than two dozen nine. i'm getting five books a day through the internet and dirty books mailed to me from authors. she said i'm just getting so many books and to be honest with you, i almost don't bother

picking up the written books that arrive in the mail. i have so many that just come over the internet and it's so much easier. but that the chance of getting a book published was remote. but john had a very unusual book. we have an announcement. kathy green can tell you how it's doing. it's "the civil war in color" is the name of the book. but a shot up over there yesterday? [inaudible] >> on amazon will it get every single day, it was number nine yesterday. [applause] >> so we appreciate you coming tonight. i'll tell you a little bit about what you are going to see. first of all, these are wonderful photographs of the

civil war by the great photographers, matthew brady, timothy o'sullivan and others that shuffle reference. he retained them from the library of congress. i'll let him describe the process. i hope you appreciate the beauty of what is occurring at the civil war and color. that is to have this world-class coming in now, photographers of the civil war who went out there and risk their life and to these pictures and people had to freeze for 20 seconds or 15 seconds, otherwise they are worried. 150 years later, strahan three. john guntzelman having stood next to him for 20 years in 90-degree temperature and freezing cold rain and pulling out and looking out what is the, i know he has a spectacular i.

he sees color. he sees white as most photographers do, but he sees images like you and i don't. it's almost like he is about to another species beyond this and so it's altogether fitting that he came up with the idea of changing the black and white photos and the color. so i take a little joy in creating this book publishing hopefully the men sat together. i would like to introduce john guntzelman with "the civil war in color: a photographic reenactment of the war between the states." [applause] >> well, first of all, i want to thank all of you for being here this evening. i am absolutely thrilled with

this event and i'm so happy that you guys are here to spend a little bit of your evening to learn more about this project. i want to extend a warm welcome to why you guys for being here. after the introduction that paul gave, i should probably just pack up and leave. but yes indeed, kyl has been a friend for 20 years. i worked with him on many occasions and it has always been a pleasant text area. paul is one of the most in the csa people i've ever met. he has the enthusiasm of a child. i mean not in the best possible sense. he brings everything to a project and a small project this evening is spread by the people

here and it just so happy for you. it was a little more back story to it than just this evening, which paul mentioned. three years ago, i had almost completed the book and was then trying to get the book published. i had no agent, so i contacted paul and said to you by chance know anyone who could maybe help me with this project? blackly enough come making new kathy green. kathy subsequently became aged, subsequently destroyed the book. it is an amazing world we live in now that she can have relationships longest in my business, telephone, e-mail. kathy and i had e-mailed hundreds of times, a thousand times and yet this evening was the first time i laid eyes on

her, which is just a little bit bizarre, but pleasant nevertheless. they shop at sterling was just a perfect fit. the senior editor at sterling for group and i in concert with a design company that worked with sterling came out with the layout of this fabulous, fabulous book. a sizable portion of their input is responsible for the overall look of this book. it is just fabulous. it is so perfect of a mash i cannot even imagine the project ever having been done or brought to fruition anywhere else. they just did a terrific job. i'm a site with little bit of

the background on this boat of genesis, if you will, where it came from. my wife and i., as paul said in late 2007, my wife and i were vacationing on maui. at the time she was reading a book about the civil war. but, tears and glory by the author janus-faced flood has also on ohio. the first title of this book is led to some glory and how ohio won the civil war and then he changed the title back. we were looking at the photographs and at that time, we knew that the sesquicentennial was not too far in advance. so we talked a little bit about photos. i said she, with a peak rate to

see a book of color, civil war photographs? be careful what you wish for. when we returned from holiday, i did a little bit of research on the availability of black-and-white photographs. i found numerous site. the gold standard of site is library of congress. they have such a collection of the best work of timothy o'sullivan, brady alexander gardner and others. just phenomenal. in addition to that, they have scanned this material at infinitely, incredibly high resolution. these scans are available online. you don't have to come to d.c. to look at these things, to then have photographic prints made and take them away.

you can download these things to your computer and even more importantly, there are no great. these are all public domain. so once i found that out, it seemed like this really has to be a great idea. as i researched further, i found there had never been a book of colors civil war photographs before. it a unique job. unique is not a word that cannot compare dates. it's either unique or it is sent in this particular book has at least so far. when i found this stuff, i started downloading what i consider to be the best images. and by best, it was a twofold roach. they have to be high quality

photographically, but even more so, they had to have great human interest primarily found in the faces of people of that area. people are not that it's different now. they lived in different times, different circumstances, but people are pretty much people. once i decided on mac, i broken into eight different chapters of the book and segregated the downloaded material into the sections, the chapters and then started colorizing on. i second that the simpler ones first. a simple, that would be portraits. the first one i dad was a portrait in the book of robert e. lee. the portraits were simpler because it's a man to the waste

usually eye color, hair color, some buttons on the uniform and things of that sort. that's pretty much it as opposed to large bottle sealed shut that have hundreds of people in trees on the wackos, horses, what have you. said it was a learning experience for me. i said it was more complex as my facility at colorizing on. but the background of all of this goes back to the quality of the imagery scanned at library of congress. some of these photographs were scanned of the 4000 dpi, dots per inch. that color resolution i can move in and in and in and colorize the slightest little detail in

the images about the image falling apart. most of these photographs, many -- most probably -- many people don't realize photos of that era were quite often shot this stereo view cards, it left and right image. the camera had two lenses. these were then printed and the cards that can be chopped into a device called a scary opticon. you can see the image in stereo, very similar to a probably remember the viewmaster thing as a kid. we would send and look at it. these were very common in that time, in that area. the spacing of the two lenses was whiter parts than the spacing of our two eyes.

consequently the three-dimensional effect is even stronger than you'd see in person. if you've ever had a chance to look at these things, the three-dimensional aspect of these images is really remarkably good and this 150 years ago. 3-d movies now may be new, but what is new is old again. once i downloaded the vast black-and-white image is, first thing i did was to clean them up a bit. they had dust, scratches. in some cases, since these were all photographed on what plate glass plates and in some cases the plates actually cracked. so i had to digitally bring the images back in the tracks back

together in three or four instances where a person horton issue to see the whole picture rather than pieces of it. i claimed cleaned the things that began with dust and scratch removal, but in no way did i want to do anything to alter these. these are iconic historic photographs. no one can mess with them. no one can change them. you have not the right to do anything to alter these photographs. so i thought it was absolutely anathema to do anything as far as altering the pictures or anything to them. once i had cleaned an image of, i then turned it into an rpg file. let's assume the original file with 15 mag says lack and white photograph. it then suddenly became a 45 meg

fio. these were huge files i was dealing with. the primary tool i use to do this was adobe photoshop, which is a beautiful tool. a sickly adobe press a color overlay over the original black-and-white photograph, but it does not alter the black-and-white contrast -- black-and-white ranch in contrast. this is nearly over the top of a color on a shirt will be lighter or darker, but it does not modify the black-and-white image underneath it. back to my photos were colorize trimming action. various devices were used. crayons, pastels, and.

usually, the best ones on backbone were the ones that were the most transparent, which then allowed you to see more of the black-and-white image behind it. with the advent of the quality of photoshop, you are allowed to do that with no restrictions. it's really a phenomenal program. again, going back to the detail of these scans was so good i could just move then into individual but on a group in a field half a mile away and then go back and you would see every bit of it. so my next job was to try and do some research on it purpurea colors for this staff. there are a glut of sources on

the internet and in acm. the uniforms, for instance, still exist. so i did a lot of research as to what was a perv area. what was appropriate for women's clothing of that era. what color birthday? for the right, more muted? i was able to fineness through hundreds of checks on the internet, searches on the internet and finally periodically my information just built and built the further along aycock, the further he knew how to proceed. the purpose of this book is not an historical book. the photographs are historic. but i am not an historian. the purpose of this book was to

show people a pretty good idea what it was like to live back then, 150 years ago. the black and white photos never do that. the color photos moved to a point where you actually can see that. it's just a whole different level of looking at these images. and you see more detail that you otherwise would probably not have seen in black-and-white. a number of people have talked to me and said wow, i've seen detail in it but i never would've have noticed is black-and-white. but again, the purpose is for people to make that connection to 150 years ago, which is that it's not when dinosaurs roamed the earth ago. 150 years ago is not that long ago. yet, when you view it

prefiltered grayscale photographs, concert i can look that way. it's very similar to what we see now. also looking at these photographs, you the little details of life, and the shoes, but were true. i'm not necessarily talking about uniforms. i'm talking about what were the women wearing. there's one photograph of a number of slaves collecting cotton. if you look at it closely, and make a mention of it. one of the black ladies has a gold earring on her ear. i didn't put that they are. colored gold, but it was there in the photographs. sort of like looking at a gateway to history that allows you to see more. color allows you to see more than you ever would have noticed

in black-and-white. again, it is intended to be basically like a coffee table book, something that one does not have to be an historian to appreciate. you can look at this and never read a word of text, may look at the photographs in you can walk away from this book seen something, finding something of interest. absolutely, absolutely. a closer view of the same lady. it is just astounding. this is an area that is so similar to nowadays i am just amazed at it. there was some of the book has been quite good as kathy mention and i am just so thrilled that people have been able to connect to what i hoped they would get from the book.

again, it is not a history book, but it is a way to go back in time and see that time in a more realistic way and maybe we can then learn from them as well. i didn't want to get in a great deal of detail, but it's a very slow going process. it made the better part of three years, two and a half years anyway once we returned from our holiday. it took me about two and a half years to colorize these pictures. initially my concept was through with the 150 pictures. 150 pictures for the sesquicentennial. it turns out the books of this type usually prefer around 200 photographs. the final end result is a little more than 200 photographs, but

there it is. the colorizing listeners are going. once i finish that, blowhole thing of writing text for the book came about. that was the better part of another year to do it. altogether it's about a three and a half tonight for your project. so i'm not sure if i have another one of these in may. but only time will tell. again, i have to go back to library of congress because of that the quality of the scans i couldn't have gotten any number of civil war photographs downloaded from many other places than they would not have been able to appear like this. they just did not have the revolution. the library of congress is fetched there is no pixelization in it. you can download these things on

four or five different levels of resolution. what i have four was always the highest uncompressed files in these of course are huge files. once you start moving in on the spouse come you never see in a pixelization. it starts on a par with the great structure becomes evident and that is absolutely astounding. other than not, it was a very slow going process. i found it an exciting process. the idea of someone asking me before was it a fun to do? what was even more fun was when i was see a picture partially completed. i get so followed in the minutia of doing buttons on a uniform and after an hour or back away

from the computer, roll the chair back from the desktop a little bit and say that looks pretty good. i have 10% done. 90% more to finish. but perseverance has always been one of my things. so i did persevere and it's very satisfying to me to have an idea like this that comes to fruition and is a successful idea. but i have had so much hope to so many people. mr. wilson, ms. currie and, the people at sterling. they have just been so wonderful and they saw this name and immediately caught it and got it before the public. again, the job sterling did on printing this, the quality of printing is just astounding. so i'm not sure that i have a

whole lot more to say about the book, but i would certainly be willing to open up for questions. >> but may impose under the first question. this is a picture of an. i think his skin tone is unusual in this different than i would have anticipated and i'd like you to explain how you arrived at this skin tone. it's darker -- >> is darker. more rocket. i started colorizing night and tried it three or four times. i said wow, that's skin looks really dark. you have to realize the colorization project is controlled, if you will, by the background, contrast and brightness range. so i then did an internet search on lincoln's complexion.

sounds like a nonsearch, but i found a number of hit to it. he was described as being very dark, hot very ready complexion. his sin was described like leather. that gave me the suggestion that maybe this thing is probably more correct then we might never know. but again, that goes back to what is inherent in those photographs. nothing was changed in those photographs. i thank everyone, but the people i should think the most are the original photographers who took these things. coming in on the wagon to a battlefield, your darkroom is in the wagon bouncing around. you have to find a source of

water. while the photographer sets out, the assistant pulls out a glass plate, puts egg mixture on a sort of like a clue and holds the silver nitrate solution. the plates and has to be split into a carrier, taken back to the camera, split into it, photograph exposed, slid back to the tent or wagon is the case may be photographed on the spot. of course this all has to happen within a reasonable time before the play trace out because then it is no good. it is just a labor-intensive thing. i guess i assumed that the newness of the medium at that time was enough to spur these people onto incredible odds and

they did such an incredible job. paul mentioned you had to stand still for a while. i think i make mention of that and are they such book that some of these photographs, and is hurt or had his blurred her whole body. they moved during the interval of exposure. even in bright sunlight back interval exposure could have been two, three seconds. sometimes less, sometimes more. all those things compounded to make it so difficult and they pulled it off. without those photos, that is the true artistry behind this book. the fabulous, fabulous photos. yes, sir.

i've seen many of these images, always in black and white, which is an abstraction. i want to thank you for bringing the color to the pictures, which we can relate to what the whole another level of emotion. [applause] >> i.t. and thanks so much. you must eloquently said what i hope this book achieved and apparently it has. >> i was tremendously impressed with this image on page 19. i am a photoshop teacher and this looks really hard to me. i wonder if you have tips and tricks or something to pass on to the students. >> now, it's not as difficult as

it looks. if you go back to a site about retaining the black and white contrast, if you take the green of the photograph away, the white dots are going to be there. [inaudible] >> that is inherent of the photograph. again, i did none of that. he was there in the original photographs. it's a great photograph because here you see people dressed up for the event of having a photograph taken. the detail of all the ladies dresses, that's what they were like then. who would have thought? in that case i did not have to. and many other cases the button had to be colorized. but in cases like that, that is

inherent in the black-and-white photograph. going back to what i said before, 150 years ago when images are hand colored, the more transparent of a wash put over the top of it, the more effect is because you can achieve the black-and-white image. but again, there's many other photographs where you will see these against the sky. you can see the sky through the trees. i did not get in and colorized leave. but no, based upon a motion picture background, i was able to arrive at what are called not. holdback that allows you to

knock it into something. in the case of the tree against the sky, but they figured out a way to generate not, which is pretty difficult, i attempted colorized the tree, the green and colorized the sky blue and in effect put those elements together. we still have to get involved coloring the word. if it were not a labor of love, it probably never would've happened. because again, there is no simple way to do this, at least not to the level that you see in the book. yes, sir. >> when it comes to your color palette entries of colors, i know when i take a picture

today, a flash can wash out a picture. back then it was just a comical and you got what you got. but when it came down to the person of color, the lady with the earring, how did you determine it was cold versus silver versus another memo? >> it was the choice they made. in cases like that, it's a best guess. there is no way in the world short of a time machine you can never go back here to >> i just didn't know if you are looking up black in my photos various colors and how the color might show up in a black and white. >> not necessarily. >> to some extent it was an educated guess based on stuff i had read and had researched. comparing this stuff to modern emotions is not a good thing to do.

of course there are no emotions. but if you compare to modern emotions, the quality of keith green modern emotions being panchromatic lack of a way negatives doesn't compare at all with house stuff is grabbed 150 years ago. this is a great value was not 100% representative to the color value. the difference being panchromatic will represent grant about the same brightness value is color would. ortho carbonic is usually more sensitive to red. so anything with red would appear little bit darker. [inaudible] -- how wonderful these photographs are. there is no way to mass produce photographs in these days.

discussed at these pictures not knowing forever they'd never make a dime because everything that showed up in a newspaper with an etching. >> that's absolutely true. there was no way of transferring a camera negative glass plate or positive print. the technology was not tear. matthew brady died a pauper because he thought he would sell these things to the government after the war and the worm is so painful to most people that they didn't want anything to do with the war. so he died a pauper and without the library of congress saving news, we would probably not still have that. but yeah, there was no way of doing that. they had no way of enlarging.

they didn't take a negative decisive blow to the sides. ahead to have a plate that size. many look at the photos in here at campus of that area, you will see at despair in size. symbolic is, satellite is straight months of negative existed, could be a positive image made on albumen paper, duke lou, if you will, that held the light sensitive material to paper. there is no way to much of anything except the size that you shot is what you see is what you get. if they can cause back to why so many of these were shot this stereo view kurds because stereo view kurds were very, very popular then. another mh -- another photo that is very popular then were

visiting cards of the state. but they were visitor cards about the size of a baseball card and these were mailed to family and friends, traded blake baseball cards. and those were made with cameras outfitted with four or six or eight months is so that the is made from that camera could then replicate six, eight, four times, whatever. photography then was rather archaic. but what i found amazing was that while it was archaic, the overall technical quality of the images was really remarkably good. now these were all big negatives. they're not the size of say the size of say 35-millimeter 90 days, but indicative this size,

the equivalent of an eight by 10 view camera for something made in the back of the wagon 150 years ago, the quality of these things is just astounding, just absolutely amazing. >> as you have a desire or have you seen the originals? >> no, absolutely not. to do that, that was not where i wanted to approach this from. i mean, to do that you could've spent five years going through the library of congress and looking at these. i'm a motion picture project once i did go to the library of congress to look at photographs of the 1906 earthquake and i remember the event well. one reason because my car was towed. [laughter]

but they rolled out card of the spread and they were huge. and many of these were original first-generation prints in the ace. but i saw everything to do that because the scanning is so good in the library of congress has done this so often and so long that their approach to it is they don't want to change it. they want to show you as much as they possibly can from the contrast range. other than that, they don't want to do anything. >> one other question. so photoshop did not predict for you a color? >> absolutely not. >> so it's not like some of the other colorization software? >> now, color shop, photo shape

predicts nothing even when the computer is going to crash. now, even with files that size, i didn't have much of a problem with that. photoshop does not predict anything. i could never imagine there'd be a program to do that. some of the colorizing was pretty bad because they were limited. many work with a still picture versus 24 images safe that can, when you have them at this incredible resolution come you can spend time to get in there and detail what you want to detail. but there's a terrific amount of thought going into it. again, my background as a cinematographer, i can look at

these things to say was that all the way across the way across the city and resulted pleasing. some of the stuff israel. i know some of that i have to generate or extrapolate, but that's okay. the end result has to be sort of a pleasing palette across the entire photograph. >> i wondered if you could just walk us through how you chose the colors, for example, of the women's dresses. they're all kind of beautiful. why is one green and one round? >> i had research again women's clothing of that era and is essentially my choice. i had more choice obviously a women's clothing and staff that

normal civilians war than military, obviously louis gray pretty much to some extent -- >> he spent a lot of time -- [inaudible] >> akamai looked at them. i realize colors are not that muted. so once i would do something like this, i would refer not to repeat myself. this young lady right here in the reddish-brown thing. you look at the texture for the pattern of the cloth, which would put her decode, sort of like that, or would you prefer to see a blue? to me blue would not be appropriate for something like

that. but there is great latitude on the colors he would select for some of those things, especially women's clothing. adding imac >> they discovered colors are much brighter than we thought they were. textile: a colors are all wrong. they've got lower and lower -- [inaudible] >> the civil war ladies slake waitresses, too. >> two questions. one technical and one not. is there any way to infer that depredations and a black-and-white, what color that might be? >> not really.

there's no real way of doing that. i wish there were. however, sometimes you can look at -- here's an interesting one right here. george armstrong custer. when you look at photographs of custer, i did a lot of research on this haircolor and some people said it was dlo, was blonde, sunset reddish blonde. his skin tone is pale. if you know people who work reddish hair, their skin tone usually is pale. you also see, not on this photograph, but others you see a lot of watching on his skin. so it is a pretty good destination for that to say this is pretty much what custer would have looked like. and again, when i would find a

conflict in the color of his hair where lincoln ties or anything else, there is no way to prove 100%, so i would go with the consensus and go from there. but now, i wish there were. it's a great idea, but there was not. >> the other question is given the intensity of what we were doing, how did this change your perception or how does this change your feelings towards the civil war? >> say it again. >> how did it change your two civil war? >> like anyone else come a look at these black-and-white photographs and it seems like a long time ago. in one sense it is, but another does not. a native fire more immediate, far more real and fire more

personal than i ever would have imagined. this isn't something that happened half a world away in some third world hellhole. this happened here on our own soil. so it has great import to the american experience. adding imac's >> i'm not going to get into that argument. i use pc, not mac. i have the pc aficionado. my son says you are not. but you know, when you have some pain that has worked well for you for years and you are so knowledgeable that it becomes intuitive. i don't want to change that. he bought me a mac once and said try this for a week or a month and i did.

i didn't want that. i'm not a computer person. i don't want to have to think about what i'm doing before i do it. so my background in pc -- again, some of us could stand here and say their background is in mac. i think the end result would be probably the same given all the input being the same. photoshop is photoshop regardless of the platform. >> to mark questions. >> how did you pick pictures? >> habit i picked the pictures? simonetti's photographs are well-known photographs. almost everyone has seen at some point or another. when i went to the step of library of congress, i looked at thousands of photographs and

after a while, there is just something about assert photographs that just clicked with me. this is a great photograph to use. again, i wanted stuff that was pretty good photographically, mostly in focused and sharp. and i don't say that as a joke. but the longer you stand still -- i wanted stuff that is technically quite good, but i wanted stuff that grabs people by looking at faces. there's something about looking at a volvo. this is in instead of real time. ..