What do you do to become a part of history? Probably go to a historical monument and get yourself photographed, while imagining the grandeur of the centuries past. What if you share your photograph with actual yesteryears beings and objects in the same frame? Exciting isn’t it.
Well, it is thanks to Seth Taras, a self-taught American artist, and the History Channel that made this possible. History Channel had come out with a fascinating idea in the form of a worldwide campaign called ‘Know Where You Stand’. The aim was to make people aware of the historical importance of the place where they live. For this, they hired Taras.
What Taras did was quite interesting. He spliced current pictures with historical photographs that showed what happened at the exact spot in history. For this, he travelled around the world to locations of historical importance to find the right spot and the exact angle of the original shot. He then blended the current photograph with the original one by using a photo editing software. Little wonder his incredible series has become most thought-provoking and gripping.
Sample this, one of Taras’samazing photographs shows a man walking his dog in Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States, the exact spot of the tragic Hindenburg zeppelin disaster. Taras simply superimposed the photo of a man walking his dog with this shocking photo of the Zeppelin up in flames in the background. Incidentally, this zeppelin crash killed 35 of the 97 people on board.
Such was the popularity of this History Channel’s 2010 campaign that it had to be translated into 30 languages. It was published in 130 countries. It comes as no surprise that Taras’stireless efforts and meticulous historical research won him a Cannes Lion.
More Info: Seth Taras Pictures
