The world's first faked news footage?
Along this dusty track and to the undulating ground at either side, 'the six hundred' charged the Russian guns at Balaclava in 1854.
Spent cannonballs littering the ground show the ferocity of the resistence put up by the Russian gunners, (though the cavalry actually reached the guns and slaughtered the gun crews, they were unable to put the guns out of commission and the Russians had the guns firing again within minutes of the light brigade departing....and around as many as 450 actually survived the charge, though many were taken prisoner and the toll on horses and men effectively finished the brigade as a fighting unit.)
The picture was taken just days after the battle.
But recently a photograph taken from exactly the same spot and presumably within minutes of the previous pic has come to light.
It shows the exact same scene but the trackway having been cleared of cannonballs. They have been moved into the gutters of the trackway.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, that would be expected in the aftermath of a battle, to aid the passage of wagons, men and weapons. But no-one knows which photograph was taken first.
The long exposure times the cameras used prevent the appearence of any figures in either picture, unless they were standing still for 5 or more minutes. And both scenes would have been cleared of any corpses by the time the pictures were taken.
If the first picture taken first then the road hadnt been cleared of the cannonballs but the absence of any corpses of men of horses is strange as they would need substantial wagons to shift such large and rotting objects, so the cannonballs would have been cleared first.
This suggests that the second pic was the one taken first, and then the photographer placed some of the cannonballs lying cleared by the track back onto the road to enhance the dramatic effect of the picture.
The worlds first war footage is the world's first faked war footage.
PS. This might be the first actual photograph of a battle.
Its thought that it might be a shot taken at the height of the battle from Raglans position on the Sapoune Ridge looking into the smoke from the Russian guns in the distance. Possibly, if this theory is correct, the light brigade are in there somewhere amongst the carnage. And then the track in the pic is the very same one shown in the previous 2 pics.
And the scene of that view today.
http://www.panoramio.com/m/photo/41034928
