The mystery of the “same sky” postcards

November 8, 2021 8:51 AM

A collector noticed something strange in his collection of 11,000 vintage postcards: Many of them all had the exact same sky.
posted by 40 Watt (31 comments total)

For other impatient people, from the transcript:

Dexter was the go-to guy to print chrome postcards. He had very large presses, and he could print them at very high speeds. He had a big art department. He would offer to photo-correct any problems in the image. So if the sky for whatever reason didn’t look the way a customer wanted it to... The artist would cut out a mask that would just go right up the telephone pole and across it and down and along the roofline or whatever it was. Then you would put the sky behind it and you'd match the two of them up. These two cards have the same image in the sky because they had stock images of skies.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:07 AM on November 8, 2021 [18 favorites]

Nowadays Photoshop can do sky replacement automatically.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:14 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

PhotoShop now has a “Replace sky” feature that comes with preset skies, so we’ll be seeing more of this going forward. Dare I say, “Watch the skies.”
posted by ejs at 9:15 AM on November 8, 2021 [10 favorites]

So much for Serenity’s claim that “you can’t take the sky from me.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:16 AM on November 8, 2021 [16 favorites]

I have to admit, I only watched that that because one of the postcards in the video thumbnail was from my hometown, but it was pretty interesting. I think Brouwer's theme sets speak to the same instinct that gives us Instarepeat.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:20 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

There's a long tradition of sky replacement in photography. Eadweard Muybridges was doing similar cloud replacement as far back as 1875.
posted by octothorpe at 9:24 AM on November 8, 2021 [8 favorites]

My phone does this too, even changing the time of day or night, adding stars, the moon lightning, rain, etc.
posted by signal at 9:26 AM on November 8, 2021

Now I want to buy postcards and eat French toast.
posted by yellowcandy at 9:26 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I’m always amazed by what people can do by just physically manipulating negatives and other aspects of the physical photographic process. Clearly, digital tools make it easier for everyone, but the real masters of old school photo alterations, well, hats off to them.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:32 AM on November 8, 2021 [15 favorites]

Pretty much the same theory behind that squeaky metal door or happy baby sound effect that you don't notice until you notice it the first time and then realize it's everywhere -- a lot of media isn't about portraying reality exactly, it's about presenting it in a pleasant, recognizable way.

Plus, skies aren't all that pretty all the time, if you're photographing lots of buildings you don't have time to wait for the clouds to get pretty. I'm sure there's a focal-length issue here, too: if you're focusing on a building, items in the distance beyond it don't always look 'right', the clouds might look weird and tiny. Sky seems off? Boom, go grab the sky we used last time.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:47 AM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Right, so this is basically the Wilhelm Scream of skies.
posted by zoinks at 9:52 AM on November 8, 2021 [31 favorites]

The National Library of Ireland puts photos on their Flickr stream to allow crowdsourcing of more info on their collection of photos, and it's amazing how much early "photoshopping" went on. A lot involves skies being blanked out (these are mostly black and white photos) but every now and then you get something like this one of the Marquis of Headfort, which was probably taken at the Punchestown races in 1915. However, his rosette and female companion have been removed...
posted by scorbet at 9:53 AM on November 8, 2021

“At least we are under the same sky, you and I.” – Ranata Suzuki
posted by kirkaracha at 9:57 AM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

My parents bought a mom & pop motel in the early 1970s and had a postcard made soon thereafter. The photographer took the photo on a cloudy day but the sky is bright blue with wispy white cirrus clouds. I wonder if it is the same sky as shown here.
posted by plastic_animals at 10:15 AM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

The neighbor across the street put their house up for sale last winter and I got a huge chuckle out of the listing image that the realtor photoshopped together.

Here it is. Notice anything?
posted by mookoz at 10:33 AM on November 8, 2021 [22 favorites]

Pretty much the same theory behind that squeaky metal door or happy baby sound effect that you don't notice until you notice it the first time and then realize it's everywhere -- a lot of media isn't about portraying reality exactly, it's about presenting it in a pleasant, recognizable way.

That pretty much goes for any fight in any movie. Once you realize that every punch has a completely fictional, unrealistic, often duplicate sound effect, you can't avoid noticing it. Since it is our new 'reality' I think we should now add punching sound effects to actual boxing matches so they more closely match our mental model of reality. (I'm not being serious but I'd still like to see this happen at least once).
posted by eye of newt at 10:54 AM on November 8, 2021

The neighbor across the street put their house up for sale last winter and I got a huge chuckle out of the listing image that the realtor photoshopped together.

Here it is. Notice anything?
posted by mookoz at 10:33 AM on November 8 [3 favorites +] [!]


It appears that there is a sun setting behind the house, and also a sun in front of the house casting a shadow of the trees on the snow.

Do you and your neighbor live on Tatooine?
posted by Kibbutz at 10:56 AM on November 8, 2021 [8 favorites]

Here it is. Notice anything?

Someone across the street has one hell of a floodlight.
posted by LionIndex at 10:56 AM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Here it is. Notice anything?

I'm not sure if that would be so disturbing if I wasn't prepared ahead of time. But, damn, it's disturbing now.
posted by pjenks at 10:58 AM on November 8, 2021

Here it is. Notice anything?

Is it the conspicuously placed United States flag hung directly above the main entrance identifying it as an embassy of the United States of America?
posted by some loser at 11:48 AM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

I should start a blog full of real estate agent photo-manipulation shenanigans, but that's off topic here.
posted by mookoz at 11:56 AM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Right, so this is basically the Wilhelm Scream Instagram filter of skies.

FTFY
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:03 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

“The subjects of early photographs lived all their days under cloudless skies. Neither daguerreotypes nor Talbot’s paper negative process could easily capture drifting clouds. One writer reflected on the daguerreotype era, noting that “the sky was represented by a dull, uniform tint of a slaty blue color, without perspective or depth, and the complete want of every living creature gave the pictures a deserted and mournful appearance.” Initially it was assumed that representing clouds in photographs was impossible, and some operators took to painting them in with ink on the back of paper negatives before printing. With improvement in lenses and the invention of the collodion process, the fleecy sky seemed to be within reach by the 1850s. Collodion’s color sensitivity was limited to blue light, though, so balancing the exposure for the blue sky against the lengthier one required for the green landscape remained a challenge. During this period, instructional manuals and photographic journals regularly printed recommendations for how to achieve cloud effects, “whether by natural means or dodges,” as one photographer put it.

Not only were photographers frustrated by the lack of clouds, which could make a stormy seascape roil beneath a paradoxically empty sky, but they also despaired of what remained in place of the clouds. When the sky was overexposed, the thin negative revealed the blotchy and streaky evidence of chemical pours on the plate. This defect was considered so grave as to completely ruin a photograph. One critic argued that such “streaks…often spoil fine pictures and oblige us to throw them aside.” Others noted that the clear negative revealed a “heavy, dingy, blotty proof” or complained that the sky appeared “dirty.”

The first answer to these woes called for the photographer to simply paint over the offending part of the negative or black it out with india ink, so that no detail at all appeared in the positive print. This advice was popular well into the 1880s, when an article for the burgeoning class of amateur photographers suggested, “The photographer should never rest satisfied with smutty dull skies, trusting to his steady hand to block them out of the negative with opaque.” The technique was easily accomplished when the horizon was regular, but the introduction of any protruding bits, especially foliage, complicated the task significantly.”

—Kim Beil, A World Without Clouds, Lapham's Quarterly
posted by oulipian at 12:26 PM on November 8, 2021 [7 favorites]

Here it is. Notice anything?

"Happy little accidents"

-Bob Ross.
posted by clavdivs at 12:39 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

An obsessive collector noticed something strange in his 11,000 postcards.

Observant and organized, certainly -- but what makes this particular collector especially "obsessive?"
posted by swift at 12:44 PM on November 8, 2021

Hooray! This is a great excuse to go over my postcard collection!
posted by TheCoug at 12:48 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Today in glitches in the Matrix:
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:55 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

swift: Observant and organized, certainly -- but what makes this particular collector especially "obsessive?"

It's one of the first words the collector uses to describe himself in the video, FWIW.
posted by clawsoon at 12:56 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

An obsessive collector noticed something strange in his 11,000 postcards.

Observant and organized, certainly -- but what makes this particular collector especially "obsessive?"

I think "looking through 11k postcards for similarities" counts.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:01 PM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Dammit. We made a vintage postcard for our "We've Moved!" notification for our mid-century house. Had I known this...
posted by hwyengr at 1:54 PM on November 8, 2021

If anyone were to composite a decent clean version of the sky, I know I'm not the only one who'd be happy to start sneaking it into things...
posted by bink at 4:03 PM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]