No evidence of a blue flame for sure. Likely a staged photo and whoever got the job of lighting the pressure stove didn’t have a clue how to prime it, not helped by the low level priming cup (so an early model).
Staged or not a very interesting picture. Lots of accruements for a shelter during the blitz. Judging from the helmets some of the stove watchers are air raid wardens. Oddly enough, most interesting to me is the do on the person leaning over the bicycle with blankets stacked on it, to the left. Gotta be a pony tail on that....
The photo's in monochrome, so no one can tell whether the flame's blue or not. When you blow the photo up, the flame appears to be full and well controlled, not at all like the unfocused yellow flame during a flare up due to insufficient priming. Also, I'm not sure how one can deduce that they had no clue of how to prime it - these stoves were much more commonly used by far more people back then than now (including in England during the war) - they were not just collectors' items for a small group. Far more likely that they knew just what they were doing. And the flame looks strong and controlled to this viewer. Peter
I think this picture, even if staged, simply was made to depict people making do under dramatic circumstances. To have a stove going, perhaps for tea, fits into a sense of homeliness, that things are allright. Either way, an impressive document.
Indeed, likely to be orthochromatic b&w film back then, so without a red or orange filter blue would in fact appear as a pale tone.
Light source up and to the left would be about right for electric floods at the top of the tunnel arch.
Assuming you mean 'do as in hair-do, the centre parting (without ponytail!) was a pretty common style in those days. A good example can be see being sported by actor Maurice Roëves as Sergeant James in 'Danger - UXB' - and in the same series, a blatant example of a stove being used unprimed with a tiny yellow flame emanating from the jet yet allegedly managing to keep a kettlefull of water on the boil. I might have to watch the series again to find the evidence... Edit: Well, this link, second image, shows Sgt. James and his centre-parting. He didn't have a pony-tail and I don't think the Army would have been too happy about it either! Danger UXB | Classic Camp Stoves Also the guilty stove, although it doesn't really show the pathetic little flame...
I've seen other images of the underground air raid shelters and this looks about normal to what I've seen in the past. I'll admit I'm no expert. lance
I dunno, but there was a nazi psychopath running around at the time called Oskar Direlwanger, very nasty chap indeed, even his fellow nazis thought he was a bit extreme. In some photos his likeness to Cummings is striking. It's the spacing of the people.
I've no doubt at all it's a posed photograph for propaganda purposes intended to show how Brits coped with the challenges of The Blitz. Obviously the reality was far different...
On further reading I see that it was possibly a morale building propaganda photo. Certainly the crowd watching everything going on suggests that. I take it they would be cropped out in the final print.
The lighting pretty much comes down to what presscall said. Old films could not see red: it appears black. The caps/bonnets on the wall could well be red. And the old films saw blue too well. The human eye is not actually very good at blue, so even a faithful change from colour scene to black-and-white can have blue looking oddly bright. Orthochromatic black-and-white is so responsive to blue that this invariably happens. The camera that took this was probably a large format camera and about the size of a briefcase. The lighting must have been harshly white or even blue. And probably bulb flash though it might have been cinema lighting. In short, it isn't candid!
