History of Photography
9 th century-Hasan Ibn al-HaythamHasan Ibn al-Haytham was a mathematician, astrologist and physicist of the Islamic golden age. Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light bounces on an object and then is directed to a person's eyes. He was also an early supporter of the theory that a idea must be proved by experiments based on evidence, therefore understanding the scientific method five centuries before Renaissance artists.
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The Camera Obscura
The camera obscura is a simple device which requires only a converging lens and a viewing screen at opposite ends of a darkened chamber or box. It is basically a photographic camera without the light-sensitive film or plate, only changed in size and decoration .
1724- Johann Schultz
Scholars had known for centuries that certain compounds, mostly natural silver salts, darkened when caught in the sunlight. Johann Heinrich Schulz, a professor of anatomy, discovered that silver salts, specifically a piece of chalk dipped in silver nitrate turned black from white. The unexposed side remained white. He experimented creating photographic impressions, but eventually it all turned black because of exposure. In the 1720 s he baked silver nitrate in an oven to show that light, not heat, caused this discoloration.
1839- Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre-The Calotype,was a early photographic technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot of Great Britain in the 1830s. A sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. Those areas hit by light became dark in tone.
-The Daguerreotype was the first successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Daguerre each Daguerreotype is a image on a silvered copper plate. A daguerreotype is not flexible, is rather heavy and sharp. It has a shiny surface and is breakable. Since the metal plate is very sensitive, most daguerreotypes are shown in a special case. Different types of casing existed e.g. an open model and a folding case. |
1854- George Eastman
When Eastman was in his 20s a friend told him that he should take a camera on a holiday. Eastman bought the equipment, and although he never actually went on holiday, he became very interested in photography. However, the weight and cost of the equipment needed to take and develop photographs soon led Eastman to search for improvements. He spent three years in his mother’s kitchen testing with gelatin emulsions, and by 1880, he had invented and patented a dry-plate coating machine. He is also the founder of the ' Eastman Kodak Company' and popularized the use of roll film, and helped with the popularization of photography altogether.
Camera Obscura
The camera obscura works by allowing light to enter a dark room through a small 1cm wide pinhole. As the light enters the image on the outside is reflected onto the wall/ tracing paper ( depending on size). The camera obscura was the first ever camera to hold a still image that artists could trace over, to create a realistic looking painting. We created our own camera obscuras by cutting a pinhole into a cardboard box and then cutting out one side with a 1 cm frame.
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed is how long the shutter is open for, therefore allowing light in. If the shutter is open for a long time the photo will be taken over a longer period , therefore catching any movement that may have happened while the shutter was open.
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Phillippe Halsman 'Jump'
Phillippe Halsman was born on the 2nd of may 1906 in Latvia. He was a portrait photographer who was most famously known for his 'jump' photos.
"Starting in the early 1950s I asked every famous or important person I photographed to jump for me. I was motivated by a genuine curiosity. After all, life has taught us to control and disguise our facial expressions, but it has not taught us to control our jumps. I wanted to see famous people reveal in a jump their ambition or their lack of it, their self-importance or their insecurity, and many other traits." –P.H.
Aperture
In the f.3.5 photo the focus is only on the closest person and everything in the background is blurred, however in the f.13 photo the first person is in focus but you can begin to make out small details in the background of the photo, and it is less blurred. Once you get to the last photo (f.22) the first person is still in focus but the other two people can be made out clearly and the photo is almost completely in focus.