The camera obscura is initially one of the first concepts of converting landscapes into images. It was achieved by blacking out all light sources in a small room, only leaving a small hole correlating to the landscape that is wanted to come through. The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. This technique has been used for many reasons ; Firstly was widely used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes, then progressed to be an aid to drawing. With the subject being drawn posing outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built, followed by smaller and even pocket models, making the art more available to the general public. The interior of the box was painted black and the image reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up.

This adaptation is the main stepping stone to Nicéphore Niépce’s work with light sensitive plates. He did this by coating  pewter with various light-sensitive substances in an effort to copy superimposed engravings in sunlight. He called this heliography, meaning sun drawing. Niepce trialled many different substances to find the most effective one for his aim. He tried paper sensitized with silver chloride, but was only partially able to fix the image. He next tried a light-sensitive material bitumen of Judea, a kind of asphalt, which hardens on exposure to light. He achieved his final aim in 1826 by permanently fixing the view from his workspace onto a pewter plate. Metal had the advantage of being unbreakable and was better suited to the subsequent etching process to produce a printing plate.

Louis Daguerre used this finding with the intention of improving the very long exposure times by either chemical or optical means that Niepce gave in on.