Errol Morris is a genius. He’s just so persistent and hard-working, something notable in his films. He writes here on the question of which of two very similar-looking photos came first. (Link from Jenny Davidson.)
Errol Morris is a genius. He’s just so persistent and hard-working, something notable in his films. He writes here on the question of which of two very similar-looking photos came first. (Link from Jenny Davidson.)
I think the evidence is very clear that he removed the cannon balls, not added. If you look at the locations where the cannon balls are, you'll see little divots in the road. I see enough of them that correlate well with the balls on the road that I believe they were moved away not onto the road.
It's actually very interesting to take the two pictures and layer them on top of each other in an image program like Gimp or Photoshop, and then switch the layers to compare them visually. The one with balls ON has significantly more cannon balls in the ditch in the foreground.
I still think I see divots where the balls were on the road, but it's more complicated by the missing balls in the ditch where I don't see divots. perhaps the divots in the road came first, and the balls were simply scattered onto the road, falling into the divots.
Actually, I think the bottom photograph might be staged. I'm looking not just at the road, but the cannonball that is perched on the opposite edge of the ditch from the road in the foreground (just over the "S" in September on my screen. It seems to be in a precarious position that would be hard to achieve by accident.
Morris is an admirable researcher, and yet (as far as I can tell) he misses something that his commentariat picks up immediately: you can estimate a time of day for each photograph from the shadows cast by various objects.
A majority of commentators think the sundial effect suggest that the ON photo preceded the OFF photo – in other words, there likely no staging, but soldiers "harvested" cannonballs between the two exposures.