Photography - The Origins Of Photography, Early Photographic Processes, The Evolution Of Cameras, Early Uses Of Photography
light using images photographs
Photography is the art and science of creating images using light. For most of its history, this has usually meant using silver compounds that darken when exposed to light. With the growth of computers, photography can also be done with electronics that measure light intensities and create images based on them.
The invention and perfection of photography has affected many areas of life. Of course, nearly every family now has albums full of snapshots, portraits, and wedding photographs. But photography is also an integral part of the modern printing, publishing, and advertising industries, and is used extensively for scientific purposes. Motion pictures consist of a series of photographs, taken at the rate of 24 per second.
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Photography has been called the art of fixing a shadow. The ancient Greeks knew that a clear (though upside down) image of the outside world will be projected if one makes a tiny hole in the wall of a dark room. But no one knew how to make this image permanent. Called a camera obscura, such rooms were chiefly used as aids to drawing, and understanding perspective. After the Renaissance, when persp…
During the 1830s two different photographic processes were invented. The Daguerrotype became more popular at first. It was created by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, who created illusions for French theater, with help from Joseph Niepce, an inventor. Their process created images on copper plates coated with a mixture of photosensitive silver compounds and iodine. Dagurre realized he could significan…
A commercial camera based on Daguerre's patent, came out in France in 1839. New camera designs followed, mirroring the changing uses for and technologies used in photography. Large portrait cameras, small, foldable cameras for portable use, and twin-lensed cameras for stereoscope photos came out soon after the invention of photography. Bellows cameras allowed photographers to precisely cont…
Many artists were threatened by the invention of photography. Immediately after photography was first displayed to the public, the painter Paul Delaroche said, "From today, painting is dead." In fact, many portrait painters realized that photography would steal their livelihood, and began to learn it. Ironically, many early photographic portraits are overly stiff and formal. With exp…
For much of its early history, people argued about whether photography should be considered art. Some, including many artists (many of whom used photographs as guides for their own work), considered photography a purely mechanical process, produced by chemicals rather than human sensibility. Others said that photography was similar to other printmaking processes like etching and lithography, and n…
The history of photography is intimately linked to that of mass production. Publishing was growing quickly even as photography did, fueled by the growth of cities and newspapers and increased literacy. Before photography, newspapers, magazines, and illustrated books used wood engravings to illustrate their articles. These engravings could be printed in the same presses, using the same methods and …
From the invention of photography, most people considered its inability to render color to be an important defect. Many early photographs had color painted on by hand in an attempt to compensate. Those attempting to solve the problem of creating color photographs took their cues from researchers into human vision, who theorized that all colors in nature are made from combinations of red, green, an…
Photography has became an essential component of many areas of science. Ever since the U.S. Surgeon General's office compiled a six-volume record of Civil War wounds shortly after the war, it has played a crucial role in the study of anatomy. Photographs can provide an objective standard for defining the visual characteristics of a species of animal or a type of rock formation. But photogra…
Like many other things, photography has been deeply affected by computers. Photographs now can be taken by cameras that do not even use film. Instead they use electronic sensors to measure light intensities and translate them into digital code that can be read by a computer. The computer translates the digital code into a grid of points, each assigned a number that represents a color (or level of …
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