Fixing the shadows
Photography turns the ordinary into the extraordinary by what’s in the background of the image or the people that are inside the image itself. Original photography was based on the shadows that photographers saw in the surroundings that they were in. The term “fixing the shadows” was a chemical combination used in the final steps of processing an image onto paper, which stabilised or “fixed” the image, neutralising its sensitivity to light.
Camera Obscura
The Camera Obscura is an optical phenomenon that’s totally natural. It’s where the room has to be completely dark and then there is a small rectangle where the light can come through and then over time the image will be displayed in the room where you want the phenomenon to happen.
Camera Obscuras have been around for thousands of years and they started with artists using blank boxes and projecting an image on to a piece of paper or a piece of metal. The Camera Obscura can be presented inverted (upside down), or reversed (left to right).
Nicephore Niepce
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor and one of the earliest pioneers of photography. He developed heliography, a technique he used to create the worlds oldest surviving products of a photographic process. He used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene.
Louis Daguerre
Louis Daguerre was a French artist and photographer, recognised for his invention of the Daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography, however he is mostly known for his contribution to photography. He was also an accomplished painter, scenic designer, and a developer of the diorama theatre.
Daguerreotype
The image was printed on to a metal plate which meant the image was just lying on top of the plate which made these daguerreotypes very delicate and easily damaged. With the image being on metal and then having a glass plate put over the top of the metal he said that it was like the person in the photo was “on the edge of being present”. The daguerreotype was very expensive to make and took ages to produce one, this meant that they were not mass produced and they were very valuable and precious.
Henry Fox Talbot
Henry Fox Talbot couldn’t draw so he couldn’t make real life things he saw into 3D drawings, which led to him inventing the Camera Obscura so he could see the things he wanted to draw. His idea was to use paper negatives where the image would sink in to the paper and he could mass produce them and ship more of them out.
Richard Maddox
Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative dry plates for photography in 1871. He was known for photo micrography which is photographing minute organisms under the microscope. When he realised his health was at risk with the ‘wet’ collodion’s ether vapor, he came up with a new substitute with the sensitising chemicals cadmium bromide and silver nitrate and that they should be coated on a glass plate In gelatin.
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American Entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experimentation in photography he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry.
Film/print Photography
Film/Print Photography is where the images are printed from a film in a camera. It shows how accurate and intricate the images taken on a film camera can be and is really rewarding to see how the photos develop from the film.
Digital Photography
Digital Photography is a process that uses an electronic device ( a digital camera ) to capture an image. Instead of film, it uses an electronic digital sensor to translate light into electrical signals. In the camera the signals are stored as tiny bits of data in bitmaps, tiny bits of data that form the image.
