Ultimate Rephotograph

A brilliant rephotograph sent to me by reader Andy Johnson—

Same guy, same car, same location, but fifty years have passed. Amazing. The second photo was taken this month.

Thank you Andy!

Mike

Andy Johnson adds: "Many thanks for posting the photos Mike. I loved your Rephotography item and thought of these two photos. The original mid '60s photo was taken by Peter Ruffles, who has documented the places and characters of our town—Hertford, Herts, UK—for about 60 years. Morley Blake bought the car new and happened to be in the town when Peter was photographing the buildings being demolished to make way for a major new road which split the town in two. You can see some of these buildings in the background. Morley did some long camping trips in that car, taking it to Finland and even Russia where in some places it was the first sports car they had seen! After clocking up almost 300,000 miles the car was stored in a garage near us. The 1987 hurricane blew the roof off the garage but luckily the car was unharmed. Morley finally decided to get the car restored and found a local MG expert called Brian Brown who did a great job and I'm sure it now looks better than new. We had always planned to try to recreate Peter's original photo and recently we got to do it."

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JOHN GILLOOLY: "Love this!"

Peter Gilbert: "So the driver is all original, completely unrestored, some parts still working??  :-)  "

R. Edelman: "When I initially glanced at the photographs, I was thinking the car was an MGB, and then I realized that it's a Midget. Three hundred thousand miles in an MG Midget? That is heroic, and should be recognized with a medal. How about the Croix de Roadster?"

Comments

[Paul Van]

Did he ever get to actually drive the car? (Poor joke about their legendary quality, or lack thereof.)

[Tom Bell]

So many more cars!!!

Just a thought ....when my dad came home from the war and started work in Rothbury Northumberland ... in a town of 2,200 people there were three cars, a butchers van, a village bus and Lord Armstrong's Bentley.
In the first surgery my dad had, his last patient of the morning was an elderly man. When he was a boy his father was the butler to a previous Lord Armstrong at Cragside House in the village. He, aged eight, turned on the lights in the first house in the world to be fully lit by electricity ....
It is all so new !!! The changes have been racing for a hundred and fifty years!

[MartinP]

An interesting pair of pictures, with an interesting story behind them. The older shot used a lens with a longer effective length than the new one though?

[Alan Carmody]

What an absolutely wonderful pair of photographs.

And it is equally incredible to hear of a mid 60s MG that kept going for 300,000 miles!

Question. Is it an MGB, MGC or MG Midget? My guess is that it is an MG Midget.

[Mahn England]

My first two cars were the Mk 2 and Mk 3 Austin Healy Sprites...pretty much the same car with a different badge. Much was fun had in both. I don't have a photo of either sadly.

[Mark Jennings]

I go with Tom Bell: so many more cars now. And also it looks as though there were not so many trees in the old days.

A lot fewer cars on the road then meant that you could have more uninterupted fun in the MGB. In the late 60s I could drive the TR4 on the little back roads of central VT and sometimes see only another car or truck or two all
afternoon. There was just the road, the very rural scenery, the car and me.

Wish I'd started something like this back then.

Need we contrast pictorial qualities? Even so, the recent shot got the break of a better day and some very helpful fill lighting too.

[Russell Guzewicz]

I learned to drive in an MG. This resonates deeply in my soul. The most unreliable car I've ever owned but the one that I remember the most.

[Once you get to know them, it's easy to get "imprinted" on old MGs! I never owned one but I got to drive a friend's extensively once. --Mike]

[BERND REINHARDT]

This beautifully illustrates that dynamic range isn't everything. I much prefer the slide to the garish and artificial CMOS colors.

[Wolfgang Lonien]

This is brilliant!

[Don]

I count 1 car in the first, and maybe 15 in the second. 3.4 billion people in the world when the first was taken, 7.4 billion in the second.

And with an existential threat facing humanity one of the most populous, powerful and polluting countries in the world just voted in a climate change denier.

[Tom Burke]

@Tom Bell: you're right about the number of cars. There's a photo of my wife and her siblings playing cricket in the suburban street where she lived during the 60s. In the middle of the street, mind you - there was just no traffic to speak of in those days, and no parked cars either. Just like the first photo above, in fact.

[Rod]

Is it just me or does the contrast look much better in the early image? 50 years in photography has not made so much difference.

[Bill Bresler]

300,000 miles in an MGB? That's more impressive than the 50 years. My 1972 MGB quietly rusts in my garage. Nice pix, though.

[Henry Rogers]

Mike,
If you look at:- http://www.pbase.com/hhmrogers/restored_half_plate_camera
and:- http://www.pbase.com/hhmrogers/quarter_plate_magazine_camera
You'll see some examples which might be of general interest, with over a century between old and new. At least some of them were taken with the same camera.

[Roger Bradbury]

MartinP: I think so, but after a good measure of the screen I reckon there's very little in it. However, the newer shot is a good close match to the old one; usually the newer picture is only approximately from the same position as the old. This one is very close.

[adamct]

I love this, too. I think this pair wins all the marbles!

Best,
Adam

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I guess it's true that those MGs can be hard to start.

Cute photos. Recording the passage of time is a job for which the camera is uniquely qualified.

[Michael Perini]

I love it and I love MG's---Nice !
I did one of my own a couple years back, but it doesn't qualify as a real rePhotograph because the location changed, but for me, that was part of the story.
http://mjperini.tumblr.com/page/4

Old Cars like old friends, carry feelings with them.

[That pair is wonderful too! --Mike]

[Ade]

Lovely story, and interesting to see how much town planners can affect a scene. Reminds me that I took a few rephotographs of my own area based on shots in the local council's online archive: https://www.flickr.com/photos/big-bubbles/15642985866/in/album-72157606165943212/ (start here and click right; links to the original shots in the descriptions). The real prize would be shots comparing the canal that originally ran through the town with the dual carriageway that replaced it, but original views are hard to come by and almost impossible to replicate with either sufficient visibility or, thanks to the road, personal safety.

[Dave Levingston]

I had an MG Midget of about that vintage. Spent more time working on it to keep it running than actually driving it. I'm astonished that someone managed to put 300,000 miles on one.

[Bill Tyler]

My MG Midget was perhaps my favorite of the many cars I've owned over the years. It handled nimbly, got amazingly good gas mileage, and was just plain fun to drive. The conveniences were minimal. To turn on the heater, you stopped the car, opened the hood, and turned a valve that allowed hot water to flow to the heater. The turn signal switch was a three-position toggle switch in the middle of the dashboard - left, middle, and right, and you had to remember to put it back to middle after the turn. Unfortunately, the early Midgets had a fatal engine defect. The crank was supported by only three bearings instead of the more usual five. This meant that it flexed excessively, and eventually cracked. I'm guessing the specimen shown here is a slightly later model, with a five-main-bearing engine.

[Bob Feugate]

Owned an MGB in the same color. Loved it/hated it. Looked great standing still, which was good because it spent a lot of down time. I became expert at trouble-shooting its electrical system. Cannot imagine how he kept his Midget running all these years.