Photography
An art form invented in 1830s, becoming publicly recognised ten years
later. Today, photography is the largest growing hobby in the world with
the hardware alone creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Not
everyone knows what Camera Obscura or even Shutter Speed is, nor have
many heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson or even Annie Leibovitz.
In 1839 Sir John Herschel came up with a way of making the first
glass negative as opposed to metal. The same year he coined the term
Photography deriving from the Greek "fos" meaning light and "grafo" - to
write. Even though the process became easier and the result was better,
it was still a long time until photography was publicly recognized.
In 1901 the Kodak Brownie was introduced, becoming the first
commercial camera in the market available for middle class. The camera
took black and white shots only, but still was very popular due to its
efficiency and ease of use. Color photography, despite being explored
throughout the 19th century, did not become commercially valuable until
the middle of the 20th century. The scientists in the beginning of the
century could not preserve color for long enough, as they were lost with
time passing due to their chemical formulae. Several methods of color
photography were patented from 1862 onwards by two French inventors:
Louis Ducos de Hauron and Charlec Cros Practical who, however, worked
independently. Finally the first practical color plate reached the market in 1907.
The method it used was based on a screen of filters. The screen let
filtered red, green and/or blue light through and then was developed to a
negative being later reversed to a positive. Applying the same screen
later on in the process of the print resulted in a color photo that
preserved the color. The technology, even though slightly altered, is
the one that is still used in the processing. Red, green and blue are
the primary colors for television and computer screens, hence the RGB
modes in numerous imaging applications.
The first color photo, an image of a tartan ribbon, was taken in 1861 by the famous Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell who was famous for his work with electromagnetism. Despite the great influence his photograph had on the photo industry, Maxwell is rarely remembered for this. The reason for that is his inventions in the field of physics simply overshadowed this accomplishment.
The first ever picture to have a human in it was Boulevard du Temple by Louis Daguerre taken in 1839. The exposure lasted for about 10 minutes at the time, so it was barely possible for the camera to capture a man on the busy street, however it did capture a man who had his shoes polished for long enough to appear in the photo.
source : http://photography.tutsplus.com
Today we take a step back and take a look at how this fascinating
technique was created and developed, because proudly knowing the past is
the primary way to create a great future.
Camera Obscura
Before photography was created, people already knew the principles of
how it eventually got to work. They could process the image on the wall
or piece of paper, however no printing was possible at the time as
preserving light turned out to be a lot harder task than projecting it.
The instrument that people used for processing pictures was called the
Camera Obscura (which is Latin for the Dark Room) and it was around for a
few centuries before photography came along.
It is believed that Camera Obscura was invented around 13-14th
centuries, however there is a manuscript by an Arabian scholar Hassan
ibn Hassan dated 10th century that describes the principles on which
camera obscura works and on which analogue photography is based today.
Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a
box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in
proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. The way
it works is that due, to optical laws, the light coming through a tiny
hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, i.e.
the wall of the box. The image was mirrored and upside down, however, so
basically everything that makes today's analogue camera's principles
different to camera obscura ones are the mirrors and the film which is
used to capture and preserve the image created by the light.
Photography, the way it was developing, was always believed to be the
killer of the fine art. However, it is believed that the photo
principles were widely used by Renaissance artists like Leonardo,
Michelangelo and others. In the mid 16th century, Giovanni Battista
della Portacentury, an Italian scholar, wrote an essay on how to use
camera obscura in aid of making the drawing process easier. He projected
the image of people outside the camera obscura on the canvas inside of
it (camera obscura was a rather big room in this case) and then drew
over the image or tried to copy it.
The method is quite similar to that which was used in the Retroscope
drawing in the animation industry in early twentieth century. The
process of using camera obscura looked very strange and frightening for
the people at those times and the Giovanni Battista had to drop the idea
after he was arrested and prosecuted on a charge of sorcery.
This is a picture of camera obscura in action the way it was used back then.
Even though only few of the Renaissance artists admitted they used
camera obscura as an aid in drawing, it is believed most of them did.
The reason for not openly admitting it was the fear of being charged of
association with occultism or simply not wanting to admit something many
artists called cheating.
Today we can state that camera obscura was a prototype of the modern
photo camera. Even though it seems useless today, many people still find
it amusing and use it for artistic reasons or simply for fun.
Installing film and permanently capturing an image was a logical
progression.
If you feel like giving the camera obscura a go, you can see how to build it following this link.
The Invention of the Camera
The first photo picture - as we know it - was taken in 1825 by a
French inventor Joseph Niepce. It depicts a view from the window at Le
Gras. There is little merit in this picture other than the fact that it
is the first photograph taken and preserved.
Due to the technical issues the exposure had to last for eight hours,
so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west, appearing
to shine on both sides of the building in the picture. There is, of
course, no composition as photography at the time could not be seen as
art but rather as technical innovation.
Like I have stated before, by that time people already knew how to
project pictures, they just didn't know how to preserve and "save"
light. Niepce came up with the idea of using a petroleum derivative
called "Bitumen of Judea". Bitumen hardens with exposure to light so the
unhardened material was then washed away. The metal plate, which was
the media used by Niepce, was then polished rendering a negative image
which then was coated with ink producing a print. One of the numerous
problems with this method was that the metal plate was heavy, expensive
to produce, and took a lot of time to polish.
In 1839 Sir John Herschel came up with a way of making the first
glass negative as opposed to metal. The same year he coined the term
Photography deriving from the Greek "fos" meaning light and "grafo" - to
write. Even though the process became easier and the result was better,
it was still a long time until photography was publicly recognized.
At first photography was either used as an aid in the work of an
artist or followed the same principles the artists followed. The first
publicly recognized portraits were usually portraits of either one
person or family portraits to preserve the memories. Finally, after
decades of refinements and improvements, the mass use of cameras began
with Eastman's Kodak's camera. It went on to the market in 1888 with the
slogan "You press the button, we do the rest".
In 1901 the Kodak Brownie was introduced, becoming the first
commercial camera in the market available for middle class. The camera
took black and white shots only, but still was very popular due to its
efficiency and ease of use. Color photography, despite being explored
throughout the 19th century, did not become commercially valuable until
the middle of the 20th century. The scientists in the beginning of the
century could not preserve color for long enough, as they were lost with
time passing due to their chemical formulae. Several methods of color
photography were patented from 1862 onwards by two French inventors:
Louis Ducos de Hauron and Charlec Cros Practical who, however, worked
independently. Finally the first practical color plate reached the market in 1907.
The method it used was based on a screen of filters. The screen let
filtered red, green and/or blue light through and then was developed to a
negative being later reversed to a positive. Applying the same screen
later on in the process of the print resulted in a color photo that
preserved the color. The technology, even though slightly altered, is
the one that is still used in the processing. Red, green and blue are
the primary colors for television and computer screens, hence the RGB
modes in numerous imaging applications. The first color photo, an image of a tartan ribbon, was taken in 1861 by the famous Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell who was famous for his work with electromagnetism. Despite the great influence his photograph had on the photo industry, Maxwell is rarely remembered for this. The reason for that is his inventions in the field of physics simply overshadowed this accomplishment.
The first ever picture to have a human in it was Boulevard du Temple by Louis Daguerre taken in 1839. The exposure lasted for about 10 minutes at the time, so it was barely possible for the camera to capture a man on the busy street, however it did capture a man who had his shoes polished for long enough to appear in the photo.
source : http://photography.tutsplus.com
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