Photography: Early History
Tags: Cameras, Photography, Photos, Photojournalism, Photographer

Some on the very early history of photography. Smile for the birdie!!!

Astonishingly so, mankind began to show an interest in photography as long ago as 500 BC. Pinhole camera, has no lens but a small hole on one side of a box that otherwise completely light proof. When pointed towards an image of some sort, the light from this image is reflected upside down on the opposite side of the box to the pinhole. This miraculous discovery was noted by Chinese philosopher Mo Di, Greek Mathematicians Euclid and Aristotle.

In the mid 13th century, Albertus Magnus, bishop and scholar, discovered Silver Nitrate, a substance which would late prove to be essential in photography. Silver Nitrate is an inorganic compound which is the honoured ancestor of many silver compounds used today. Magnus discovered, in his dabbling, that when he separated particles of gold & silver from each other, by dissolving the silver, a solution of Silver Nitrate, which blackened the skin and captured light.

Another 400 years down the track saw the German born Georg Fabricius discovering Silver Chloride. Photo prints are created when paper, treated with Silver Chloride, allows photographic images, known as Latent images, to appear on that paper. A latent image is one in which an almost invisible representation of picture taken develops on the photographic film. The image is transparent until treated with photographic developer.

Louis Daguerre was a French artist was the inventor of early modern photography process. Although Nicephore Niepce the French inventor, usually credited as the inventor. The first successful picture “View from Window at Le Gras” was developed in 1827, which took 8 hours to expose.

Daguerreotype was the first successful photographic process. It was discovered by accident in 1837 and once the process was fixed, it was announced to the public in 1839. The photos took 10 to 20 minutes to properly expose to available light. People were required to sit still for that long to have the picture taken. Later combining new chemicals and using lens with wider apertures, the expose time was reduced to more acceptable time; 10–30 seconds. The French government agreed to pay him a pension in exchange for its rights and released it to the world as a gift from France.

Before color photography was invented, hand coloring was used to get color. It required time and a lot of skill. Colors were applied with fine brush and then fixed by simply breathing on the plate. James Clerk Maxwell a Scottish Mathematician began working with color in 1860, by taking three exposures, one each with a different color filter: red, green & blue and the projecting the three images using three lanterns with corresponding filters.

In 1907, The Lumiere Brothers- Auguste & Louis, introduced the first viable color process. They were also manufactures of photography equipment, best known for their Cinematographe motion picture system and short films they produced between 1895–1905.

George Eastman introduced flexible film in 1884, which made photography accessible to all. He also invented the Box Camera in 1886. Eastman was the man who created the brand we all know today: KODAK.

Life magazine was the first all-photographic weekly news magazine. It was originally published in 1883 as a general interest magazine. In 1936 the magazine switched its format to all-photographic news magazine and then dominated this market until 1972.

Released in 1960, the 35 mm self-contained underwater “Calypso-Phot” camera was conceived by Jacques-Yves Cousteau who was a French Naval officer, explorer, scientist, innovator and photographer. While the first underwater photograph was taken in 1856 by mounting a camera on a stick and holding it under the water, practical underwater took another 100 years to master.

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