What is Photography?Part 1: Photography ExplainedPart 2: A Brief HistoryCredit:Kodis

Part 1: Photography Explained

The word photographyderives from two Greek words . . .

.

The Greek words

'photos' - meaning light and

'graphein' - to draw

A camera is a lightproof box with an opening to admit light and a device that focuses the light onto light-sensitive material to record an image.

Key components of a camera are: lens and shutter

The lens focuses the light.

In photography a normal lens is a lens that creates images that closely match the view of the human eye.

Wide-angle lens,

normal lens or

telephoto lens?

wide-angle lens

normal lens

telephoto lens

Example of a wide angle lens photograph

The shutter controls the length of time the light is allowed to hit the film or digital sensor.

Shutter speed - The faster the shutter the more frozen the subject and action will appear. A slower the shutter speed will result in blurring.

Fast or slow shutter speed?

The light sensitive material can be film or, in digital camera, a silicon-based imaging chip.

Part 2: A Brief History

The Camera Obscura is one of the inventions leading to photography

The oldest surviving photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce. How does it look different from photographs you’ve seen?

Louis Dagguerre (1789-1851) in collaboration with Nicephore Niepce, invented the first practical photographic process in 1837 which was widely used in portraiture until the mid 1850’s.

“Boulevard du Temple," taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839, was the first photograph of a person. This photograph of a busy street only shows two people. Why is that?

1861 – The first color photograph, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, was created by James Clerk Maxwell.

George Eastman

on board the

S.S. Gallia,

February, 1890,

photo taken by

Fredrick Church

Digital cameras have a lens, aperture, and shutter, but they do not use film.

How a digital camera works