Photography

Photography

Photography started in the nineteenth century with the invention of the first camera and it changed people’s lives. The first camera was called the ‘camera obscura’. The name ‘camera obscura’ comes from Latin that means the ‘dark room’. Camera obscura is dark, closed space in a shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole of the camera obscura has to be small in proportion so it can work properly. The light come through the hole and creates an image on a mirror and the image comes upside down on the wall of the box. The first picture was taken by Joseph Niepce; the photo that he took shows a view from the window at Le Gras. It took him eight hours to take the photo. Several other techniques were developed such as the daguerreotype, the calotype, the photogenic drawing, among others.

The first picture that had a human in it was ‘Boulevard du Temple’ by Louis Daguerre and it was taken in 1839. Unlike Joseph Niepce’s photography, Daguerre took 10 minutes to take the photo and it was barely possible for the camera to capture people on the busy street but it did capture a man who had his shoes polished for long enough to appear in the photo. This is called the daguerreotype. The second technique is the calotype; it is an invention by William Henry Fox Talbot. In this technique was used a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride and was exposed to the light in a camera obscura. Those areas that were hit by the light became dark in tone and yielding a negative image. This technique can be used to develop the image on multiple papers.  The photogenic drawing was invented by Thomas Wedgwood; this technique can record images on a paper or leather sensitized with silver nitrate. Snap-shot photography such as of that Alfred Stieghtz changed compositions of paintings.

Photography was developed by different people at essentially the same time (simultaneous invention). Further developments in photography also influenced impressionists and they made the first motion picture photography. Early motion photography influenced horse-racing scenes such as this picture made by Edgar Degas. 

 References:

. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.photo.tutsplus.com/articles/history/a-history-of-photography-part-1-the-beginning/. [Accessed 01 April 2013].