Camera Obscura.

The main concept behind ‘Camera Obscura’ (latin for dark chamber) is a device used (first conceptualised in the 5^th Century (BCE). The camera obscura projects an inverted image of the outside scene onto the (pitch black) rooms surface through a pinprick hole (or lens). After the discovery of this, scientists were intrigued and attempted to find ways to ‘Fix the Shadows’ (create a permanent fixture of the image. In the 16^th century artists like Leonardo Da Vinci used this camera – for purposes like studying light and perspective – and versions of the camera obscura were engineered to become portable. – creating the first ‘camera’

Nicephore Niepce.

Nicephore Niepce created the worlds first permanent photograph using the camera obscura, and a pewter plate coated in bitumen of Judea – Bitumen hardened when it was exposed to light and the unexposed areas were washed away.

Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype – the first public photographic process. The daguerreotype produces very detailed images on a polished, silver plated copper sheet. He created this by collaborating with Niepce, a pioneer, but after he died, Daguerre continued to refine their ideas – leading to the Daguerrotype. The daguerreotype could not be reproduced but its quality and details were unmatched. The daguerreotype process involved exposing a coated copper plate to iodine vapor to make it light sensitive, the developing it with mercury vapor – then fixing the shadows with a salt solution. This became widely popular for portraits due to its detail and short exposure times – the daguerreotype dominated the photography market until new breakthroughs were discovered.

Henry Fox Talbot

Talbot had a scientific background in chemistry which directly influenced his experiments. Talbot played a crucial role in the development of early photography. (working around the same time as Louis Daguerre). Invented the calotype process, which is one of the first photographic processes to create negatives. This allows for multiple prints from one negative – a MAJOR development. Some would say this fixed, and multiplied the shadows. The calotype process involves paper painted with silver chloride. His first book ‘The Pencil of Nature’ was made with photo prints inside it – demonstrating the practical uses for photography – this probably played a key role in the development of photography because it showed entrepreneurs the business potential – putting money into the industry.

Richard Maddox

Maddox was a scientist and amateur photographer who invented the gelatine dry plate because he was worried about the different chemicals used in other methods of photography. The gelatine dry plate replaced the wet collodion process which allowed for greater flexibility because it eliminated the need to do all the work from coating and developing on site. Instead the dry plates could be stored and used later which greatly reduced the amount of equipment required on the scene. The dry plate used gelatine to suspend silver bromide on a glass plate. Maddox’s invention made photography a lot more accessible to amateurs which gave incentive to make more dry plates. The dry plate was a decent step towards the development of film.

George Eastman + Kodak Brownie.

George Eastman was the founder of Kodak – the company that revolutionised and commercialised early photography. Taking a photo was now a product you can buy. By simplifying the product with the use of his newly invented roll film  -George Eastman managed to create the Kodak Brownie – the camera with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”. This was a revolutionary step in the right direction for photography – the roll film was able to be produced because it was on flexible plastic instead of glass – making it miles more compact. The Brownie cost only $1 and really popularizes photography among the masses. Eastman also was a key player in the industrialisation of film because he saw the business potential. Kodak was also a key player of the invention of colour photography while under Eastman’s ownership – this was due to their invention of Kodachrome film which is not the standard for colour film photography. Overall Eastman was the start of consumer photography – it was no longer a hobby for the rich or the ones with loads of time – it was cheap, easy and not very time consuming.

Digital Photography

In the modern age – digital is king, it has completely taken over. Film photography is seen as a hobby in and of itself and is increasingly more expensive due to factories closing down and sales reducing. The digital camera was invented by Steven Sasson at Kodak in 1975. The technology used was a CCD which was essentially a sensor that converts light into digital signals. In the 80s the digital camera improved continually because sensors were becoming more and more sensitive and sophisticated however most cameras actually weren’t fully digital and used analog video technology. In the 90s digital cameras were becoming more commercial because the camera companies were releasing cameras that used memory cards which was much more practical.. The invention of the DSLR in the late 90s further boosted the industry because of being able to change the lenses and a much larger image quality. Following this, point and shoot cameras became more popular because they allowed regular consumers to make memories without having to learn manual settings and having a large cameras all the time.

This is the general timeline of photography – from super basic methods of recording real life scenes, to the highly advanced and refined DSLR cameras we live with daily now.

Romanticism

The early invention of photography coincided with the era we now call the romanticism era. As many of the ideas and beliefs of romanticism greatly contributed to the early experimentations of photography, which has helped it become what it is today.

Chemical developments (early 1800s)

the break through for camera obscura came with the observation that certain chemicals are light sensitive. Such as silver salts and silver chloride. So these were used to create images, however they ran into issues when they realised they couldn’t stop the image from developing, so the image they wanted would over develop and turn black.

when they first started discovering using chemicals the first ever trial, Humphry Davy soaked a piece of leather with the chemicals and got a botanical specimen directly onto the leather and exposed it to sunlight, and that is when they saw a first image start to appear. This led into the marketable photographic process in 1839.

Dageurrotype

Louis Daguerre invented the dageurrotype process in 1837. To make a dageurrotype you need a sheet of copper that is plated with a thin coat of silver, this is then cleaned and polished to a mirror finish . Once it is sensitized it needs to be kept in a light proof container with iodine and bromine vapours, until the surface turns yellow. To develop the image you must place the plate over a source of heated mercury fumes until the images appears, this creates a milky white image. Now the image is fixed and is not developing any further.

Nicephorus Niepce

Was a French inventor and one of the earliest inventors of photography, who died on the 7th of March 1765. Niepce invented heliography, which is a technique that has created some of the oldest surviving products of a photo.

Joseph Nicephorus Niepce first experiments is uncertain, but they stemmed from his interest in lithography and the camera obscura. Niepce’s first images were captured on silver chloride-coated paper, which were particularly difficult to fix, later moving on to using Bitumen of Judea ( a light sensitive asphalt which is used in etching ) Niepce’s successful camera photography was between 1822 and 1827 and was rediscovered in 1952. In 1829 he partnered with Louis Daguerre to develop Physautotype, whoever after Niepce passed away Daguerre continued the research on his own. A few years later the Government ending up buying Daguerres proccess rewarding him and Niepce.

Henry Fox-Talbot

Henry Fox-Talbot is accomplished in all sorts of things, however drawing was one thing he could never master. Despite not being able to draw Henry decided he was destined to get the colourful 3-dimentional world onto a piece of paper, this is when the idea of camera obscura and chemistry came together.

George Eastman and Kodak

Originally Eastman was working as a bank teller, until he became interested in photography when he decided he wanted to document one of his trips. He ending up becoming more interested in photography than going on his vacation (which he never ended going on) Eastman revolutionised photography by miles, by now producing that we now even take for granted which is a roll of film.

A few years later after producing the roll of film Eastman used the same concept to create the first “amateur camera” called the Kodak camera. The word Kodak means nothing, this is a word he came across when playing with anagrams with his mother. The reason that he had chosen this word is because he enjoyed the fact it started with a K which was a strong and incisive letter. So he thought what better to way to sell a product than to have a name people are going to remember. As well as the fact the word has no alternate meanings.

The Kodak revolution turned the empire of photography into a republic. And the emblem of this revolution was the distinctive circular prints. The first generation of the amateur photographers were called the Kodak Fiends.

Digital Photography

1969 was the heart of digital photography. William Boyle and George Smith developed a device that they called a charged-couple device which ended up being given a common name of a CCD. It used a row of tiny metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors to store infromation as electrical charges. This does the same function as the magentic tape in the older cameras.

Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins made her images with cyanotype photography. The first use of cyanotype photography was in 1843 and it was used it illustrate a book. This is the method of tracing shapes with light on photosensitive surfaces, and this has been an early repertoire of photography.

The cyanotype is a slow-reacting photographic printing formulation which is sensitive to ultraviolet and the blue light spectrum. It produces a blue monochrome print. To stop the developing of the chemicals you must use water to fix the image onto the paper.

My Cyanotype

We went outside and out either flowers or leaves that we would like to include on our cyanotype. we got the special cyanotype paper with the chemicals on it and placed our plant on top. to secure the plant to make sure it didn’t move in the wind of outside, we placed a piece of Perspexs on top of the plants and left them to sit for about 20 minutes in the sun. Then we fixed th eimages with water and here is my finshed product.

Aaron Siskind was born on December 3rd 1904, he was an editor, American teacher and photographer who is mostly known for his beautiful innovations in abstract photography. He received his first camera as a wedding gift in 1929. He used film. He takes super graphic photos of hyper-textured walls, peeling paint, rusty things, elements of writing on old machinery and signs and more. His photos are hyper detailed and have a very high contrast. I love his abstract photos and aspire to take photos like him. I love how they all have a matching style and have a strange, nostalgic feeling attached to them.

The aperture controls the amount of light that enters through iris in the lens and is measured in f/stop ,you can adjust this by changing said f/stops.

Depth of field is defined as what is in focus in front and behind the subject, shallow depth in field has limited things in focus often with a blurred background this requires f/stop or f/2 or f/4 depth of field is defined by aperture the higher the number the more in focus an example of this would be f/16 or f/22

As seen here the aperture is f/2.8 meaning the depth

Camera Obscura

The Camera Obscura was originally created around 200 years ago. However, it’s not the world’s first camera as before them was pinhole cameras neither need a power source. They project in real time the landscape Infront of the camera onto the back walls of the room or box. This was how art first started becoming more detailed after the medieval period as painters would use the camera obscura method and paint it onto the walls and on canvases. In 1826 Joseph Niepce was the first known person to create the first photograph of a scene in Italy by using chemicals which change colours in the light to capture the scene projected.

Calotypes –  Henry Fox Talbot

Invented in 1841 next was “The Art Of Photogenic Drawing” where William Henry Fox used salt and silver nitrate to create what we now know as a Calotype. He used pressed plants on a sheet of chemicals and covered them in a glass sheet to print out the shape in the sun.

I made this piece in class by using leaves from outside collected on the school grounds. I then positioned them on the paper this way so it was clear what each one was and they weren’t over-lapping. I then left them outside in the sun with a glass sheet on-top till the paper had turned a noticeably different colour and left shadows of the plants I had placed there.

Louis Daguerre – Daguerreotype

The process of the Daguerreotype created in 1837 made it possible to turn the image inside of the Camera Obscura and preserve it. The Daguerreotype is made with a sheet of copper with a thin piece of silver which is polished until mirror like, then it’s a sensitised in a lighttight box with iodine and bromine vapours until it turns a yellow colour. This produces silver iodide. The sheet is then inserted into the camera without any light touching it. After that its fixed in a sodium and then intensified with gold chloride and washed in water. The images mirror the reality of the pose due to the Daguerreotype process.

Richard Maddox

In 1851 Frederrick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process. This was revolutionary in the evolution of photography as it took only 2-3 seconds of light to create an image compared to the 1 to 5 minutes it took previously. However, Richard Maddox realised his health had been affected due to the ether vapours from this process and began his search for a replacement. He produced the idea in 1871 of coating cadmium bromide and silver nitrate in gelatine on a glass plate. This made it possible for cameras to be small enough to be hand-held.

George Eastman

Eastman tried for 3 years to create a formula and by 1880 invented the correct formula. He also invented a machine capable of creating these plates at a fast rate which made it possible for him to manufacture and sell to other photographers which is when he started his company in London due to the high rates of businesses in the area henry Strong was very impressed, so he invested some money into it. In 1892 the company as renamed the Eastman Kodak company as photography developed further.

Kodak

After Eastman realised that the plates were making the photographers hands “go bad” he started the trade with the idea of film in rolls the venture was immediately successful but the paper grain was prone to showing up through the picture. This sparked Eastmans new idea to coat the paper in soluble gelatine and the insoluble light sensitive gelatine. With the Kodak camera in 1888 photography was ready available to pretty much everyone

Digital photography

In 1957 the first digital image was created in the USA using the first operational stored program known as the SEAC.

The 1960s space race also drove photographers to think of a new way to take photos as film would be impractical  to take to space. NASA used a magnetic tape recorder to send the tv camera into electrical impulses to send back to earth and they had the first photo of mars. Later Sasson took one of the later models of a movie camera and connected it to the most recent CCD electronic sensor and created a prototype. The company Sony then created a version small enough to hold and sell in a shop the Sony Mavica the first known digital camera.

The aperture is the opening in the lens that allows light to enter the camera and onto the sensor or film. The size of this opening can be adjusted by changing the aperture settings. Take a look at the picture of a lens aperture above. Notice the adjustable blades that can move to adjust the size of the opening.

Ralph Eugene

Ralph Eugene was living as an optician whilst simultaneously creating images that surrounded themes of children , masks , movement and dolls giving his photos an eerie feeling

“Creative pictures must be felt in a similar way as one listens to music, emotionally, without expecting a story, information or facts.”

Ralph Eugene Meat yard

To take inspiration from Eugene I decided to edit one of my aperture photos to reflect the style of his photos.

I then converted the image to be black and white following the theme of Ralph Eugenes images