T206 Original Photos - Snodgrass & Dots Miller

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by wonkaticket

Found these kicking around the net...sorry if you have them already Scott.




Cheers,

John

John, that Wilson is a good example of 'almost, but not quite'. There have been several times where someone has claimed that the T206 'artists' took an 'almost' photo and modified it somewhat to come up with the final T206 image. In most cases we've eventually found the actual photo, which ended up being an exact match. The artists for the T206 set were certainly skilled craftsmen, but they weren't free-handing very much of their work.

Instead, we find that many players had a standard pose that we see examples of repeated over the years. For instance, you can find a zillion examples of Ed Reulbach's famous 'follow-through' pose - all very similar, and spread out over his entire career. Many of them could mistaken as the original photo used for his T206 art - especially some from his Federal League days, which would, of course, be impossible.

[wonkaticket]

I too assumed they "tweaked" them a bit good info Scott. I was on the fence on the Wilson but thought I would pass along.

Cheers,

John

[Runscott]

Simply because some of the non-portraits were such close matches to the photos used, I always felt that 'tweaking' was the exception rather than the rule. Once Steve B explained the detail of how the photo images were transferred to the beginnings of the T206 artwork, that theory made even more sense.

At some point I'll display a card (maybe the Reulbach 'no glove') along with an assortment of the 'close but no cigar' photographs from his career.

Not to further my debate with John D, but because he couldn't locate the original photo for Dots Miller, he (or someone else in the discussion?) said they thought that maybe the T206 art for some 'in action' shots was created by taking a photograph of a different player and tweaking it to look like the intended player. I still don't buy into that theory, and finally locating the Miller photo rebukes it, at least somewhat.

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Not to further my debate with John D, but because he couldn't locate the original photo for Dots Miller, he (or someone else in the discussion?) said they thought that maybe the T206 art for some 'in action' shots was created by taking a photograph of a different player and tweaking it to look like the intended player. I still don't buy into that theory, and finally locating the Miller photo rebukes it, at least somewhat.

I only suggested that as an idea of why we couldn't find one for Miller and it was pretty specific to him because he didn't make his debut until April 1909. Not knowing when the artwork was done for the 350 series cards, it was just a possible theory on why we couldn't find the original image. Wasn't really a discussion at the time, just throwing a guess out there.

You might not be talking about me though, because I never suggested a tweak of another players photo, I said it could be a freehand image of him. It doesn't really show his face, just looks like a generic side profile so it wasn't far-fetched before you found the original pic