The Early History of Photography:
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- Camera Obscura: Latin for 'dark room', the camera obscura was the first ever optical device to project an image onto something. The device consists of a dark, enclosed space with a pinhole allowing light rays into the space, which are projected onto a surface. the image formed is inverted. the only problem with this image is that it couldn't be fixed to the surface it was projected on.
- Camera Lucida: Technological development led to smaller,more portable and controllable devices to be created such as the camera lucida pictured here. This was used as a drawing aid by artists at the time.
This Diagram shows how artists would use a Camera Lucida.
- The image is projected onto a surface
- An artist would trace this projection onto a surface.
• In 1827 a scientist named Joseph Niepce was able to fix the first projected image. this image was of the view from his bedroom window. He is widely recognised as the inventor of photography. the image shown is the first ever photograph.
Niepce worked with Loius Daguerre in his mission to fix his image onto something. Daguerre was a painter of stage sets and scenery for the Diorama, a form of visual entertainment. The industrial revolution was changing the world at this time and scientists were looking to find a way to reproduce reality in a fixed format such as a photo.
•Niepce experimented with many processes of photographic fixing to produce this image, the mixture he produced was a compound using lavender oil as the solvent in which the chemicals dissolved within it.
Niepce worked with Loius Daguerre in his mission to fix his image onto something. Daguerre was a painter of stage sets and scenery for the Diorama, a form of visual entertainment. The industrial revolution was changing the world at this time and scientists were looking to find a way to reproduce reality in a fixed format such as a photo.
•Niepce experimented with many processes of photographic fixing to produce this image, the mixture he produced was a compound using lavender oil as the solvent in which the chemicals dissolved within it.
• In 1839 Louis Daguerre invented the Daguerrotype a type of camera which formed a laterally reversed, monochromatic image on a metal plate. It could be said that this revolutionised photography as you no longer needed to be a scientist to fix a projected image. Previously only scientists who had access to the chemicals needed and the knowledge to use them correctly were able to do this.
• About the same time period as Daguerre an english scientist named William Henry Fox Talbot developed a different type of photo called the calotype. It had an advantage over the Daguerrotype which was the fact that the image could be reproduced as a negative so that it wasn't a single un-copyable image. in the early years of the calotype it wasn't very popular as it lacked the same quality and sharpness which the daguerrotype achieved. As well as this, most european countries and america has already adopted Daguerre's process. over time this changed as development in paper technology led to better processing of images. The calotype is still used today. Talbots first experiments involved producing photograms, he called them 'photogenic drawings'.
The initial stages of photography (early years) followed the themes of traditional fine art and situations were set up in order for a photo to be taken such as portraiture and landscape. This has changed over time and many photographers asserted their own identity, different to that of normal artists. Photography branched out into its own unique art form that exists today.
This hunt picture painted by Valentin Gottfried using oil on canvas in the late 17th century is clearly very similar to the photograph above taken by Adolphe Braun in 1865. this shows that, the early stages of photography were very similar to traditional fine art of that time.