Soldiers as patriotic pixelboards
Here's a small gallery of Arthur S. Mole and John D. Thomas's photos of thousands of soldiers creating giant, patriotic pixelart images of patriotic scenes.
Incredible Pictures Formed by Thousands of US Soldiers (Thanks, Bill!)
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Wow. What's really cool about these is the perspective control. They organized the soldiers so that when viewed from the camera position the image appears like a 2-D image viewed straight on. But if you viewed the soldiers from directly above, it'd be quite stretched and distorted.
This is a shop. I can tell by some of the pixels and from having seen quite a few shops in my time.
The link's not working for me but perspective control is right. ISTR that for the statue of liberty, there were more soldiers in the flame than in her entire body below the neck.
For organization and planning, Mole & Thomas make Spencer Tunick look like a piker. Although Uncle Sam provided a lot of preparatory instruction in following orders and standing around.
And no, #2, these are real. Any artifacts are from scanning/copying/resizing. I've seen these in books printed long before Photoshop existed.
My favorite was the Statue of Liberty. It really makes me think, though--did all these soldiers not have anything better to do at the moment? These photos took a very long time to pose and get the exposures just right, I'd imagine...and that's okay with the higher-ups? I've had the same thought when watching old movies that used a lot of Navy sailors or something of the sort. I know it's (more or less) good publicity for the military, but--priorities?
"Sarge, how come we never have any fun like this?"
At first sight I assumed this was from the Soviet Union.
This is really neat...wow...
Reminds me of the North Korean festivals where everyone is compelled to go into the stadium and be a part of large, coordinated patriotic performance art as government propaganda.
I see in the first pic a shadow of a tower the photographer used to take the shot. Some of the others seem quite to be from a bit higher up.
That's quite a platform to build for a shot. Do you think they are shot from existing towers on the bases? I would guess they were probably built for the shots.
Regarding the comments about soldiers standing around and don't they have anything better to do:
Much of what most militaries do with their soldiers during peacetime is basically "busywork" to keep a large number of armed and combat trained people (largely young men) out of trouble, but still available in case of emergency.
The really classic case is being ordered to dig a hole, and then ordered to fill the hole, repeat until your officer gets bored and thinks of something else for you to do. Most cases aren't quite this blatant, however.
Sometimes busywork serves a practical purpose (Roman road building). Sometimes it's artistic (as in this case). And sometimes it's just time wasting (hole digging).
Solders doing random obviously purposeless tasks means they get LOTS of practice taking orders that may sound stupid or downright suicidal in wartime. Like a bunch of good little robots.
Camera projection onto an oblique plane
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/11/camera_projecti_1.html
Fascinating.
And yet, somehow, still not a match for these images from that same blog:
unusual-paintings-of-obama-naked-with-unicorns
What kind of chaser does that require?
Obedience as a virtue.
You can see a non-distorted view of one of these images (EO Goldbeck's Hawaiian Division) here:
http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14214&pid=93738&mode=threaded&start=
Scroll down just past the statue of liberty.
This is not shopped. I have a copy of the Battle Creek, MI photo from my grandfather who served in WWI. According to his penciled note on the back, this was at the end of his basic training and he volunteered to be a part of the photo.
#2, it's not shopped. Unless someone got shopped photos into the Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago...
#2 is a troll. I can tell by some of the words and from having seen quite a few trolls in my time.