The Beginnings of Photography

Camera Obscura •Camera = Latin for “room” •Obscura = Latin for “dark”

•The camera obscura was an optical device used in drawing, and one of the ancestral threads leading to the invention of photography.

The principle of the camera obscura can be demonstrated with a rudimentary type, just a box (which may be room-sized, or even hangar sized) with a hole in one side. Light from only one part of a scene will pass through the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall. The projection is made on paper on which an artist can then copy the image

Photography is the process and art of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or an electronic sensor.

All photography has been the result of many bright and daring inventors, entrepreneurs, and amateurs.

The History of the Photographic Image The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce. However, the picture took eight hours to expose, so he went about trying to find a new process. Working in conjunction with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the Daguerreotype in 1837. This was the first camera sold.

Glass Plate MethodScott Archer, developed the glass plate method which required immediate development. However, the exposure time was only 2-3 seconds.

Photographic paper •In photography, photographic paper is paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals, used for making photographic prints.

•Photographic paper and the positive negative process were both first invented by Henry Fox Talbot.

•Emulsion is made up from light sensitive silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin.

The Documentation of the Civil War• Matthew Brady took portraits of politicians,

members of Congress and Presidents. His most famous portraits are of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln credited part of his success to the fine portraits by Matthew Brady. When the civil war broke out in 1861, Brady felt he had to document it.

• Over 6,000 plates have survived and are archived by the U.S. war department.

The Father of the Motion Picture

“Eadweard Muybridge developed a fast camera shutter and used other state-of-the-art techniques of his day to make the first photographs that show sequences of movement. In 1879, the Zoopraxiscope was developed by Eadweard Muybridge, which projected series of images in successive phases of movement obtained through the use of multiple cameras.”

George Eastman went into business selling an improvement on the wet plate, a prepared gelatin dry plate, in 1881. Eastman continued experimenting, and in 1885 invented flexible roll film.This took the camera and photography to the masses.

The Kodak Company

In 1935, the Farm Security Administration director, Roy Stryker, hired a number of photographers to record the plightof the farmers in the Midwest. DorotheaLange captured the anguish of the Great Depression in her 1936 photo of a migrant mother.

In 1908 the National Child Labor Committeehired Lewis Hine to research the ills of the child labor industry. For several years following, Hine traveled and photographed the exploitation of children in the work force.

Some photographers function as photojournalists who capture suffering and exploitation in order to exact change.

Ansel Adams applied his love of natural beauty with his meticulous interest in photography to create stunning photographs of Yosemite National Park. Adams developed the zone system to help capture the full dynamic range of a subject.

The Zone Method

Harold Edgerton wanted to make what was invisible, visible. To illuminate what the eye could not see he invented the electronic flash. He was also pioneer of high-speed photography.

The electronic flash and high-speed photography

New Technology

In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world‘s first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels to produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print.

The first digital camera for the consumer level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable was the Apple QuickTake 100 camera, which appeared in 1994.

Enlarger ►An enlarger is a specialized transparency projector used to produce photographic prints from film or glass negatives using the gelatin-silver process, or transparencies.

It was an American, D.A. Woodward, who in 1857 first constructed an enlarger.

All enlargers consist of a light source - normally an incandescent light bulb, a holder for the negative or transparency and a specialized lens for projection. The light passes through a film holder, which holds a photographic negative or transparency, having been previously exposed in a camera and developed.

Enlarger Labeled

Developing Process ►The gelatin-silver process is the photographic process used with currently available black-and-white films and printing papers. A suspension of silver salts in gelatin is coated onto acetate film or fiber-based or resin coated paper and allowed to dry (hence the term dry plate). These materials remain stable for months and years unlike the 'wet plate' materials that preceded them.

►When small crystals (called grains) of silver salts such as silver bromide and silver chloride are exposed to light, a few atoms of free metallic silver are liberated. These free silver atoms form the latent image. This latent image is relatively stable and will persist for some months without degradation provided the film is kept dark and cool. Films are developed using solutions that reduce the free silver atoms. The strength, temperature and time for which the developer is allowed to act allow the photographer to control the contrast of the final image. The development is then stopped by neutralizing the developer in a second bath.

►Once development is complete, the undeveloped silver salts must be removed by fixing in sodium thiosulphate or , and then the film or paper must be washed in clean water. The final image consists of metallic silver embedded in the gelatin coating.

*Hang photo’s to dry

Darkroom Developing

Developer Stop Bath Fixer

Wash/ Water Bath

60 seconds 30 seconds 7 to 10 minutes (Depending on strength)

1 to 2 minutes

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