Monday, July 26, 2010

Photography as an invention

Photography is an invention of technology and it has become the most universal means of pictorial communication and of artistic expression that the world has ever known. It has the ability to overcome differences in language, cultures and geography. Photograph's are specific and realistic, where music and the related arts can only be in the abstract or generalization. Photography has been used as a scientific tool, and has the precision in making visual records which is beyond the capability of mankind without the technology of the camera. The history of photography is a matter of the growth of technology and innovation and the imagination of mankind.

The world first learned about the first fixed photographs in the year 1839. This is the that year the Daguerreotype and the Collotype were used to make pictures as they were introduced to the public. Both the Daguerreotype and the Collotype were able to make pictures quickly, easily and with little skill or training. The man credited with the invention of the Daguerreotype was a Frenchman by the name of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Prior to this there were no fixed pictures or rather photographs. The pinhole camera, or camera obscura was used to trace an image by an artist and this was a very early form leading to the invention of the fixed photograph.

The Daguerreotypes were basically mirror-like images of silver coated copper plates that were polished and then put on top of a box with some iodine. The fumes from the iodine formed by a chemical reaction with the silver on the plate to form silver-iodine, which is a light-sensitive chemical. The Daguerreotype plate was exposed in a camera to light and then the plate was put over mercury and heated. This mercury fixed the image of the light sensitive silver-iodine and the Daguerreotype image appeared as it formed on the surface of the plate. Many of the people who saw the Daguerreotype process thought it was a form of magic. There are still examples of the Daguerreotype in museums today for people to enjoy.

William Henry Fox Talbot, who was an English scientist and great scholar, is credited with the invention of the Collotype. This imaging process was very similar to Daguerre's but in 1840 William Talbot improved upon it by using paper in the early primitive camera until it darkened until he brought out the latent image to be processed by development and fixation. This process reduced the exposure time needed to become a matter of a few seconds as compared to minutes or hours. The first fixed photographs could take hours for an image to form and only fixed objects, like buildings, were used as subjects. The hours long exposure time was impractical for portraits, as the people, who were the subjects could not sit still for hours and the photography would be blurred. William Talbot named his new photography process the talbotype.

The American civil war in the mid 1860's saw a great number of pictures of the carnage and horrors of war and the many faces of death. This was due to the advent of photography and the ability to fix the images to be recorded. The early flashes used a magnesium mixture to create light for the camera to be able to record the images. Photography could capture an image and could convey an emotion that was worth a thousand words...

In 1888, the first modern automatic camera was introduced by George Eastman with his Kodak camera. It originally had enough film to produce one hundred pictures. The original Kodak originally had a fixed shutter speed that was factory set to 1/25 of a second. This early camera had a fixed focus lens that could produce a fairly clear picture of a subject at up to eight feet away.The Kodak camera has became an American tradition among amateur photographers.

"you press the button, we do the rest," George Eastman said as he put the first easy to use camera into the hands of a picture hungry world. George Eastman made a complicated photographic process very easy to use and almost accessible to anyone with the money. The early Kodak's were used by newspaper photojournalists and professional photographers alike.

Many do not know this but Kodak invented what is known as the first digital camera. Texas Instruments is credited with inventing the digital image sensor that was used in modern digital camera's today. For $24 anyone could purchase the early Kodak camera which came with a leather strap as well as a carrying case to protect the camera from the elements. $24 dollars was a fortune during this time period and was a considerable investment. The cost of the Kodak camera paid for the first roll of film and its development. When you were finished taking pictures with your Kodak you sent the camera to Kodak where the film was developed and you could send ten dollars and you got a new roll of film and this included development and processing of the new roll of film. The early camera's used a film that would flex as it was not made of copper plates, like the early photographs.

Most early photography was based upon silver as the light-sensitive compound.
The first celluloid type film was first introduced in 1895. This film was composed of nitrocellulose and it was extremely flammable. Movies were a collection of film stills that were shown quickly and this early film decomposed and many original early films were lost to history in this manner. Celluloid film was phased out in the 1930's with the advent of what is known as safety film that did not catch fire easily. Color photography was revolutionized in 1935 with the advent and introduction of Kodachrome film by the Kodak corporation.

Polaroid made its land camera and it had instant prints that were introduced in 1948. Mr. Land was the inventor of the camera and Polaroid brought his camera to market. Today almost all photographic film consists of a silver bromide compound on an acetate film. Virtually all photographic paper is based on silver bromide for various paper. In the 1920's photographers became able to use a handy compact camera that could take pictures in dim light. The first of these dim light capable cameras was the Ermanox that had the slogan of "What you can see, you can photograph."

Filters can change the color and the texture of the subject being photographed and are used for various special effects. Modern digital photography and digital editing software, like photoshop, has rendered filters to the back seat of film stills photography. Soft focus has the purpose to produce a slight blurring of the focus, and creates an optical distortion. This photographic technique is very useful in glamour portraits and weddings. When you have a subject with less than perfect features, then soft focus filters are very useful. You do not want a sharp picture of a middle aged bride or grandmother with all of her wrinkles. So you would use a soft focus diffuser filter to soften out the facial blemishes in the subject. This is in stark contrast to the sharp pictures that you can take with children portraits and family portraits and I use this technique in South Florida and Ft. Lauderdale and the Palm Beach area for family pictures and portraits.

Photography is not only used for an art form, it can also be more than just a job, but a true profession. In the field of photography there are many chances to carve out a lucrative and satisfying career. Some people make a decent living by taking pictures and they are known as true professional photographers. Just because you buy a good camera, does not make one a photographer. The pictures the professional takes are used in TV, magazines and newspapers.There are many occupations in the photography field. For example: wedding and portrait photographers, architectural, fashion and modeling photographers and the many other countless jobs there are in creating and maintaining cameras, and film and developing of film. Many people pay a photographer for glamour photography and for sensational portraits of them to display at their house and to send to modeling agencies.

The artistic part of photography quickly developed into motion pictures. A motion picture was a film with many still film frames on it. The first films were about industry and paid for by big companies in industry. The films were usually about the company and industry that produced it.The names of some of the very first such movies were the Story of Coal. The Story of Wheat. The Tea Industry, and Pottery Making. The films were used as a source of entertainment. The public was amused and informed by the films.It would not be long for independent film makers to realize that companies would pay them to make films. By 1915 the nontheatrical film business was in full blown operation and a whole new industry was born and developed into modern day Hollywood. New technologies contributed to the steady progress of the film cinema. Modern new inventions, such as portable 35 mm projector, that had its own retractable base were to show up on the scene of history. During the 1915 World Fair, which was held in San Fransisco, many films were shown that were sponsored by industry and businesses. The movie industry amused and educated the public at large then and to this day.

Another important advancement in the movie making business was the development of 16 mm sound film. This effectively killed the silent movies and the stars that were in them. Many of the silent film stars had voices that were not pleasing to the audiences and their careers died suddenly. They were victims of modern sound technology. During World War II, the film business saw great improvements over the quality of these talking movies and films. Various new modern filming techniques were used such as long,medium and closeup shots, the use of various angles for subject and camera movement, and cuts to differing scenes helped to keep the attention of the viewer. When a film was well constructed and produced the viewer is unaware of the movie making techniques involved. If a film is not made well, if the camera movements are not steady and the cuts are not precise, or if the visual time and space continuity are illogical, the viewers concentration lapses and he becomes bored and easily distracted. The overall effect of the film is substantially reduced.Most of the makers who made war time training films came from the Hollywood entertainment industry or newsreel companies.

The field is constantly expanding, particularly in the area of scientific investigation, space experimentation, atomic energy, missiles and aeronautics (Encyclopedia of Photography 1807).

"In its first short century and a quarter, photography's scope has been enormously expanded. Pictures which only a few decades ago seemed beyond the camera's capability are now within

the reach of all. But as the scope expands the tradition stays the same. Yesterday's photographer would be amazed that picture can be taken in 1/1000,000 of a second, but put a camera in his hand and he would know exactly know how to use it. Behind our present techniques, and behind our ways of seeing the world, lie the experiments of thousands of photographers who took up the camera because they believed that with it they could best say what was in their minds, and, in a few instances, in their hearts" (quoted from The Encyclopedia of Photography 1754).

Sources:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/historyOfKodak/buildingTheFoundation.jhtml?pq-path=2217/2687/2690

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography

www.duenow.com

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