[SpecialK]

Many people are forgetting the "use a camera from that time" part. Otherwise, I would agree with magkelly, if just to have people get over it already.

[monochrome]

It would be awesome to be the first person to photograph Yellowstone. BTW, He lived to be 99 and used everything from the old wet process to early 35mm Leica cameras.

Nice summary. WHJ was posted to a supply battalion, I believe, or perhaps guarded a rear-area crossroads at Gettysburg. During the war he made his sketches and watercolors to send home to his family. I was going to be truly imaginative and wish to have photographed the action next to Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine at Little Round Top, but I decided that was just a little too fanciful.

I've always had an interest in his narrow gauge railroad photographs - especially those of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River (partly now under Blue Mesa Reservoir). It's part of another hobby. My wife's great-great-grandfather was a pioneer and silver miner in the San Juan mountains in Colorado* and other frontier stuff in northern New Mexico. His mines were above Lake City, which for a brief time was served by the Denver and Rio Grande RR from Sapinero, so I've always had an interest in the railroads there.


* Maybe this is why I've always liked Pentax.

[gaweidert]

Monochrome,

Gettysburg is about a 6 hour drive from my house. I go there about once a year lately. The last two years I have gone in April before the leaves have all come out. It is amazing how many monuments and markers are obscured b the foliage once the leaves pop. I give a pretty mean battlefield tour too. Attached is a cropped photograph I took in 2009 at dawn on a hot humid day. It is looking NW from Little Round Top. It was taken with a Canon Powershot A590. This was the area that Dan Sickles Third Corps was holding before the Confederate attack was launched on the second day of fighting.

[Lowell Goudge]

Imagine you have a time machine can can only be used once to travel back in time and back to to the present. If you could go any place and time but only stay a few days, where and when would you go? Now let's imagine you can only use a camera from that time. What camera would you choose?

My choice would be the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. My camera of choice would be any Pentax available.

You have eliminated the most significant moments of all, for me, it is either the Big Bang , if you believe that was the start of time, or the first chapter of genesis when god created man,

The problem is there was no "camera of the time"

So the question is unfortunately limited to the last 150 years or so, and while this period may have significant times , events, and places, none of them really define who we are as people. That foundation of society occurred long before the advent of photography. Unfortunately, the last 150years or so, really only demonstrate, at significant points in time, how bad the human race can be, if left unchecked!

[gofour3]

I shot 35mm format Kodachome 64 slide film up till the end in 2010 and consider it the best film ever made. Unfortunately I never had a chance to shoot the 120 medium format version.

The film was only made in that format from 1986 to 1996, so my pick would be:

Year: August 1987
Location: Switzerland
Film: Kodachrome 64 120 format
Camera: Pentax 6x7
Lenses: SMC Pentax 67 55/4, SMC Pentax 6x7 90/2.8, SMC Pentax 67 200/4


To have a few days in the Swiss Alps with my P6x7 kit and some rolls of Kodachrome 64, would be a dream come true. Seeing a processed 6x7 Kodachome slide would probably make me weep with joy.


Phil

[monochrome]

Monochrome,

Gettysburg is about a 6 hour drive from my house. I go there about once a year lately. The last two years I have gone in April before the leaves have all come out. It is amazing how many monuments and markers are obscured b the foliage once the leaves pop. I give a pretty mean battlefield tour too. Attached is a cropped photograph I took in 2010 at dawn on a hot humid day. It is looking NW from Little Round Top. It was taken with a Canon Powershot A590. This was the area that Dan Sickles Third Corps was holding before the Confederate attack was launched on the second day of fighting.

What a beautiful photograph! Thank you!

Gettysburg is on my 'retired' bucket list. i.e. I have more time than a passing-through stop on the way to somewhere else - with young, hot, cranky children in the back of the Suburban.

[Lowell Goudge]

Dealey Plaza, Dallas, 22 November 1963, 12h20. Any Pentax, decent telephoto lens. Looking toward the grassy knoll.

What if you knew what was going to happen?

Good question. In the spirit of time travel logic, I'll say I'm able to observe, but not interfere, as that would alter history. Difficult as that may be!

I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I knew my president was going to be assassinated and couldn't do anything.

But the point is, by going back in time, the premise must be a) you know what is going to happen because you are selecting the time to back and observe, and B) the question is go back and photograph the event, I.e, this implies record without interfering.

But the point can be expanded further, and this is not to imply at all that JFK was not significant, but he was one man, what if you could prevent the first or second works wars, the Black Plague, and all of the atrocities of the past millennium. And shape the human race differently to avoid these things. Isn't that more important than one man? I think the question, as I responded initially is too limiting. We have all the images of the last 150 years, we don't have the images of the preceding 5000 years or so which really shaped out race as it is today. Maybe we should all go with a piece of charcoal and a sheet of paper!

[gaweidert]

Pre-Columbian America...

...before the strip malls, freeways, suburbs, factories, strip mines, poisoned lakes and rivers, denuded prairies, dirty air etc etc - you get the idea.
I'd love to see that ancient America with or without a camera.

You can kind of do that. There are two books that I highly recommend. One is called "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" and the other is called "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" The books call on records of original explores backed up with evidence of the latest archaeological finds. You will see at the "New World" in a whole new way.

In 1493 he covers what is now being called e Columbian Exchange. Columbus was definitely not the first to see the new world, but his discovery was the one that forever changed the world. Including Asia. Read them with an open mind as it debunks a lot of myths on both side of the issue.

[MarkJerling]

But the point is, by going back in time, the premise must be a) you know what is going to happen because you are selecting the time to back and observe, and B) the question is go back and photograph the event, I.e, this implies record without interfering.

But the point can be expanded further, and this is not to imply at all that JFK was not significant, but he was one man, what if you could prevent the first or second works wars, the Black Plague, and all of the atrocities of the past millennium. And shape the human race differently to avoid these things. Isn't that more important than one man? I think the question, as I responded initially is too limiting. We have all the images of the last 150 years, we don't have the images of the preceding 5000 years or so which really shaped out race as it is today. Maybe we should all go with a piece of charcoal and a sheet of paper!

I agree that many things are more important than one man. But, my premise is that in time travel, one cannot interfere as any interference would mean that history, as we know it, will change. I'd prefer not to have responsibility for that. For argument: Would that Mohammed or James had been able to foresee the many thousands of killings the adherents of their religions would cause over the last 2000 years, would they have founded those religions? Don't answer that - it's a purely hypothetical question. The point is though, what if one prevented the World Wars, only for another bigger event to happen later, nuclear etc? What if preventing the Plague resulted in some other catastrophe?

But, I am interested to know if the Warren Commission got it right, or not. Hence my wish to be in a position to view the grassy knoll on a slightly cool, but sunny 1963 day.

[monochrome]

There's always the philosophical / scientific question that if you photographed the event, did you change it by observing and recording it. If you published photos, would the publication of photos that hadn't originally been published change in some way the reaction to and understanding of the event, so that merely taking and publishing the photos changed history?

For example was Stickles' disobedience at Gettysburg (referred to above) bad or good - opinion changed over time and continues to this day. Would photographs of the actions of the 20th Maine have horrified people or reinforced the opinion that they performed heroically (Joshua Chamberlain and Daniel Stickles both received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their valiant efforts on Little Round Top). Both were politically successful after the war and Chamberlain became President of Bowdoin College.

I've always been fond of Chamberlain and considered Stickles a rogue, and self-interested.

Would photographs change my opinion or are we better off with mere historical supposition?

FWIW, I come from a multi-generational family of History Ph.D.'s and am of divided opinion about the value of photographic documentation.

[dtmateojr]

If I could go back to the moment when Jeshua of Nazareth supposedly rose from the dead I'd want to capture that. Why? Because if it was true that the man actually rose from the dead and I got a pic of that, one that not only proved that he existed but was capable of doing that? It would be one of the most awe inspiring, shocking, and probably most valuable photos in all of history. I'm not even religious and I would still want to capture that.

This.

[monochrome]

If I could go back to the moment when Jeshua of Nazareth supposedly rose from the dead I'd want to capture that. Why? Because if it was true that the man actually rose from the dead and I got a pic of that, one that not only proved that he existed but was capable of doing that? It would be one of the most awe inspiring, shocking, and probably most valuable photos in all of history. I'm not even religious and I would still want to capture that.

Well, yes, that would certainly be the ultimate capture in the Christian world.

And it would remove entirely the transformative nature of a lifetime of prayer and quiet contemplation as we seek to understand the mystery of The Resurrection.

As I inferred above, capturing the moment would alter the moment.

[mee]

Well, yes, that would certainly be the ultimate capture in the Christian world.

And it would remove entirely the transformative nature of a lifetime of prayer and quiet contemplation as we seek to understand the mystery of The Resurrection.

As I inferred above, capturing the moment would alter the moment.

Indeed.

God set it this way so that we would choose or deny Him through faith. There is little faith involved if one has photographic proof.. beyond believing the photograph is authentic.

To the OP, hmmm.. I think I'd like to have photographed a moment or moments where discoveries were made.. first time Ansel Adams operated a camera.. or the very moment when Albert Einstein discovered the general theory of relativity.. to capture the look on his face when he put it all together in his head.. hehe

[MD Optofonik]

Siddhartha gazing at the Bodhi tree after attaining enlightenment; a portrait capturing the expression on his face. So many, really.

[magkelly]

The problem for me with restricting us to a time period where cameras as we know them exist is that there aren't any moments that are significant enough to me in more recent history that I could just record and not interfere. Honestly, I could record the moment Christ rose and probably not even blink. It has no personal significance for me. The Risen Christ, he is just a myth tacked onto the life of a Jewish rebel rabbi who might have lived 200 years ago. I'm just curious to see if it indeed happened. Not emotionally involved.

The other moments I can think of, I'd want to get involved and I'd probably want to shoot someone with more than a camera. I would not hesitate to kill Hitler before he became the head of the Nazi's, for instance. Likewise if I was standing there watching John Lennon get murdered I'd cheerfully shoot MDC before he could lift his gun to take Lennon's life. All my life I've tried not to hate individual people, but in those two cases, Hitler and Chapman, I have utterly failed, and I admit it. I would do it. Oh yeah, I would, pacifistic ideals or no pacifistic ideals. The one to save millions, the other just because I'd love to wipe Chapman right off the face of this earth before he could kill John Lennon. Lennon's music it got me through a lot of crap when I was a kid and I truly loved him for it. He was far from a perfect human being but he did not deserve to die like that, at the hands of some mentally disturbed fool.

When I was in NYC in the late 80's I saw Yoko Ono sitting alone on the band shell in Central Park very early one morning. It was a particularly significant date in Lennon's life and she was there alone sans body guards, and she was crying very quietly. I didn't have to ask why. I knew from something someone had told me that it was a favorite spot of theirs once upon a time. I felt like going up to her and hugging her but I didn't. I respected her privacy. But I've never forgotten that moment. Seeing the tears on her face, it just crushed me. She wasn't putting on a show. There was almost no one out there that early. She was just mourning John in her own way. I met both of John's sons not too long after that and they were both very nice.

I wasn't too fond of Chapman before that. But after that? I think I honestly hated him. I don't care if he's mentally ill. I have NO sympathy for him. I applaud every single time they deny him parole. It's a very good thing he's never going to leave jail. Given my own hostile feelings toward him and how many people there are out there who feel exactly the same I doubt he'd live 24 hours if released. I don't like to think to think I'd do it if I had the chance, but I probably would. It would be a very hard test of my character and Lennon's ideals, that's for sure, and at the very least I'd be sorely tempted.

Going back into ancient history it's easier for me I think to remain an impartial observer. I don't think I'd make a very good time traveler if I had to do it only in the modern era. I'd be way too tempted to go and change some things....