BikeArkansas

Does anyone know the history of this photograph? I think this is Major Taylor, but not certain. I am guessing it is around 1900. Was there a camera then that could take such a great photo at the speed this had to have been. Where was it taken? I enjoy just taking in all the aspects of this photo. The riding position. The bicycle. The country side.

GeneO 

The photo looks horizontally stretched, exaggerating the angle. At least on my phone.

rando_couche

Early post-WWII, UK bicycle speedway.

SP
OC, OR

10 Wheels

Guy on the bike is White

king_boru

No, but the photographer taking the photo was great. The camera is just a tool. How you use it counts.

canklecat

That appears to be Australian pilot and cyclist John Bange, around 1930. That's just ordinary perspective distortion, nothing unusual. The lean, proximity of the front wheel to the camera, and unusually elongated horizontal crop lend the illusion of more distortion than is actually present.

The original photo actually isn't that sharply focused on the cyclist -- it appears to have been zone focused just beyond the cyclist, stopping down to increase the depth of field to compensate.

There were plenty of cameras available then with shutter speeds fast enough to capture that sort of moderate speed in daylight, even with the relatively slow films that were considered "fast" back then -- equivalent to ISO 50-100 nowadays.

Some of the larger format press cameras with focal plane shutters back then would exaggerate motion distortion, a byproduct of the large, relatively sluggish focal plane shutter curtains. But the commonly available smaller format leaf shutter handheld cameras would prevent any such distortion. And the Leica I available by 1930 might produce some motion distortion with panning or fast moving objects, but this bicycle wouldn't have been moving fast enough. (This web page explains the effects of motion on some focal plane shutter photos.)

TimothyH

That's right, and Major Taylor was a black guy.


-Tim-

John E

I was also trying to discern whether he was using a Major Taylor adjustable-reach stem.

dmanthree

True, but what made shots like this very difficult back then was the lack of high speed film. Not sure what year this was taken, so it's hard to guess what type of film/camera was used.

indyfabz

Yeah. Look at the pine trees in the background and the tree on the far right.

tyrion

found with tineye.com

https://www.adventure-journal.com/20...august-8-2012/

John Bange Pilot and Bicyclist ? Velo Aficionado



This image looks like it's been nicely sharpened. I find it hard to believe it's realistic, that he's going fast enough to hold that lean. No blur on the spokes even.

As far as camera tech - about a 2x1 aspect ration, deep depth of field suggests smaller film format (for that time, 1930), maybe a 6cm roll film.

BobbyG

Very cool. Both John Bange and how you found the photo!

cccorlew

Google is your friend...
John Bange smashes it out on his single speed racer at Aviadel, Clifton Queensland Australia

02Giant 

Eh...photo shopped.

AlexCyclistRoch

Major Taylor mostly rode shaft-drive bikes, and this one obviously has a chain. Also, that's a pasty white guy from Australia, not a very muscular black man from the US....

silkey

the interesting thing about this photo is the mans head is the natural angle for the bicycle leaning

79pmooney

No, Major Taylor "mostly" rode traditional track bikes. For a few years he had a sponsor that made shaft drive bikes and he rode them then in important events. He did set the worlds record (hour?) on a shaft drive. But never rode just shaft drive bikes. There were the realities of track racing. Gear changes are important.

I googled Major Taylor photos and saw perhaps two shaft drive bikes and a host of chain drives.

Bren

canklecat

I don't see any evidence of photoshopping or alterations. But the largest available size is still too small for critical examination for evidence of fakery such as sandwiching a negative of the cyclist from a steeply banked track onto another negative of the dirt track. If it is faked it's extremely well done, with the shadow appearing to conform correctly to the bike/rider and terrain. While the shadow could have been cast on a flatter surface, such as a track, then carefully cut and sandwiched to appear on a dirt track, it would demand extraordinary skill to conform so closely to the irregular dirt.

And that is a pretty extreme lean for such a low banked dirt ramp. They could have tried multiple attempts, probably with some crashes, to get a good one. But there's no indication of dirt, scuffs, tears or stains on his clothing.

It could have been done by suspending the bike and rider from wires, with the wires later retouched out. That wouldn't be too difficult and within the means of many retouching and darkroom techs back then. They would prefer a medium format negative at the smallest, preferably large format, although they could rephotograph a print and retouch it.

A suspension rig could account for the oddly extreme horizontal crop. The overhead support rig might have been visible in the uncropped original -- assuming that's what was done.

Other than that, while it's an extraordinary action photo of that era, it would be considered inferior by contemporary standards because it lacks critically sharp focus on the front of the bike and rider. If it was faked with a support rig harness and wires, they should have had time to check the focus more carefully.

Assuming the shot is real...

The bike was probably traveling no faster than 20 mph. Many cameras back then had shutter speeds of 1/500th sec, fast enough to freeze moderately fast motion. A slower shutter speed, 1/125th-1/250th, could adequately render this scene free of excessive motion blur. The bike is now moving toward the camera at an angle, not panning, so it's relatively easier to capture with little motion blur. It's impossible to determine how sharp the front wheel really is because it's out of focus, so any slight motion blur in the spokes or tread would be masked by the focus blur.

The photo has almost certainly been cropped so it's almost impossible to know the original film format, negative aspect ratio, and difficult even to guess at the focal length at exposure settings.

It could be done with the equivalent to ISO 50-100 film (commonly available then, although using Weston or other film speed system). The sun shadow indicates an EV 14 lighting, bright enough for shutter speeds of 1/125-1/500, with the lens stopped down to as much as f/11 -- plenty to get the apparently deep depth of field in this scene, particularly with a 35mm film camera. But it could also have been taken with a medium format roll film camera -- such as a commonly available folding camera or possibly an early twin lens reflex -- from a distance and cropped to isolate the cyclist and emphasize the horizontal aspect ratio. That could also account for the relatively deep depth of field.

The foreground and front wheel are out of focus, indicating the camera was probably either zone focused and set to the hyperfocal distance, or the photographer estimated the peak action area but hesitated a split second in tripping the shutter so the cyclist wasn't entirely in sharp focus.

A bit of a digression, but regarding image searches...

Regarding finding photos, Tineye was good years ago when it was the only game in town. But it's been surpassed by Google Image Search. Just drag and drop the photo into a Google Image Search box, or upload the photo from your device.

It'll find almost as many hits as Tineye. The main advantage to Google Image Search is it's more context aware. For example, if you use Chrome without too many blockers to screen out cookies, ads, scripts, etc., it learns your interests and guesses pretty accurately at context. In this case, I use Chrome pretty much wide open (except for ABP) specifically so it will learn my search and browsing patterns because it's more efficient. So it found not only the photo of John Bange, but also the context I wanted -- not just a bunch of random hits on the same image, but also the history, along with two or three other sites confirming the history. Tineye doesn't do that as well.

The main difference is that Google screens out some redundant hits, and downgrades hits from sites suspected of hosting malware and image hosts in countries known to routinely engage in piracy and copyright violations -- so Google Image Search tends to downgrade hits from servers in China, Russia, etc. They're there, but buried several pages deep, unless there's been a DMCA case filed. Sometimes that's a drawback when the photo was created by a Russian or Chinese photographer, and I'm interested in the origins of the photo and the photographer who created it.

But if you use Google Image Search from a different browser, using proxies or VPN, outside the filter bubble, so that you're effectively a random stranger on the interwebs, it doesn't know your interests and context so it's less likely to quickly find the info you want. Duck Duck Go and other more private browsers are even worse and can take forever to find useful info, especially with image searches.

Gotta give up some privacy to get tools like Google Image Search to work quickly and efficiently.

But I still use more private browsing for some stuff, particularly when researching news and issues in depth. If we want independent and less filtered news it's often essential to break out of the filter bubble that recommends hits based on our searching, browsing and reading patterns.

BlazingPedals

That pic of Bange shows a slight lip on the track, which I'm sure helps the tires hold; but I still have to wonder if he lost a bunch of skin immediately after the pic was snapped.

TimothyH

I don't know why the picture is so unbelievable to some.

Go to any BMX track and you will see exactly the same thing and more done routinely.


-Tim-

tyrion

I think he was stationary with his left foot on the ground, leaned way over, brought his foot to the pedal, and SNAP as he fell over onto his left side.

That lean is simply impossible on dirt. Maybe there's some optical/geometrical trickery to make the lean look much more extreme than it is, but I can't image what that might be.

TimothyH

Riding on a vertical wall is impossible....




So is flying through the air like a bird...



Yet people do it all the time. The photograph doesn't tell the whole story.


-Tim-

icyclist 

Thanks for that. I tried google and only got one match. Now I know why.

tyrion

There are a gazillion pictures of people riding bikes on the internet. If "people do it all the time" you'd be able to find pictures of someone doing it. Can you find one picture (or video) of someone maintaining that extreme lean on dirt that isn't faked?

TimothyH

It wouldn't convince you if I did.


-Tim-