The Revolution

As beautiful as the images it produces, Photography is itself a beautiful creation that man has gifted his fellowmen. Photography is basically a process through which we can make pictures or make impressions of our surroundings by using light. This entire process of photography can be achieved using a device called a Camera. The first known photography is the Daguerreotype. It grew to popularity in the 19^th century and became an innovation through which people could print their portraits. The only disadvantage being that only one photograph could be taken at a time.

Due to this disadvantage of the Daguerreotypes, photography went through another process of change as more and more people started looking for a way to replicate the images or portraits. Photographers also encouraged scientists and chemists to look for a solution so that multiple copies could be made available at a cheap price. This led to another innovation better referred to as the Talbot's process.

After almost 20 years of refinement and experiments, the modern photographic process was born in 1884. George Eastman was the man responsible for the photographic revolution that laid the foundation stone for the photography process as we see it today. Eastman’s dry gel was made solely for the purpose of replacing the photographic plate. Until now, the photographic plate was the only way of making a photograph and a cumbersome process. To add to the agony, a photographer had to carry multiple boxes of photographic plates and various toxic chemicals around with him all the time. George Eastman solved that problem. In July 1888, Eastman came out with his Kodak camera. It was launched in the market with a famous slogan: “You press the button, we do the rest”. Now people could buy this camera and use it, while the developing of the photographs was left for the chosen experts. In 1901, photography was available to the masses with the launch of the Kodak Brownie. This was the start of another era of photography.

Here is a timeline of events during the evolution of photography

5th-4th Centuries B.C.: Greek & Chinese philosophers were discussing the basic principles of the optics and the camera.

1664-1666: Sir Isaac Newton discovered that the white light actually composed of different colors.

1727: Johann Heinrich Schulze made an astonishing discovery that silver nitrate became dark when exposed to light.

1814: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce achieves the impossible. With his camera obscura, produces the first photographic image. Drawback: requires 8hrs of exposure time to get the image and the image is not permanent.

1837: The first daguerreotype invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was able to produce a fixed image that did not fade. The exposure to light also reduced considerably to just thirty minutes.

1840: The first American patent for photography was issued to Alexander Wolcott. The patent was for his camera.

1841: William Henry Talbot masterminds the Calotype process. This process was able to make multiple copies of a single photograph by using the negative-positive process.

1843: The first advertisement with a photograph was used in Philadelphia.

Photographic films to prints

Photography has come a long way since the invention of the Daguerréotypes and the Calotypes. Photographic prints are as important to photography as is the camera. You can have the camera, the technology but if you can’t take a photographic print, you can’t see how the picture has come out. Though, with the advent of digital cameras, the use of photographic prints has been taken to the point of becoming obsolete. The Daguerréotype process involved the use of metal sheets and a positive silver image was fixed on top of the metal sheet. William Henry Fox Talbot was the man responsible for moving a step ahead by using a negative through which multiple prints could be made.  

Around 1856, Hamilton Smith patented a process termed as Tintypes. The process used a thin sheet of iron as the base to yield a positive image. In 1889, it was made simpler by George Eastman, who realized the true potential of the photography market. He released a film that had a flexible base for easy rolling. The emulsion coated cellulose nitrate film base made the process of shooting images easier. Now photographers could carry their boxed cameras without worrying about the large and cumbersome plates. Eastman’s first camera was launched in 1888 and came with a preloaded film. Once the pictures were taken, the camera with the films had to be sent to the Kodak factory where these films were translated into photo prints.

Even though the camera was well on its way to popularity, the film rolls were available only in Black and White. So Photography of that period was devoid of colors. B&W films were made of cellulose nitrate that is a chemical compound that is similar to guncotton. A film with a nitrate base will deteriorate with time and in the process would release acidic gasses and oxidants. The nitrate base film was also highly flammable. Nitrate films actually built the foundation for the first flexible roll films. It also created the base for development of the 35-mm roll film in the mid 1920’s. By the end of 1920, the medium type roll film came into existence. This film roll was 6cms wide and was covered with a paper sheet to make it easy for anyone to carry it along in broad daylight. Nine years later, the TLR or the twin reflex camera was developed.

By the beginning of the 1940’s, the film roll market had gained momentum and color films were born. Though by 1935, Kodak had already developed their color film called Kodachrome. The new color films used the dye-coupled colors technology. This technology used a chemical process, which connected the 3 layers of dye together to create a color image. This system is still in use. The next discovery and development was that of a Triacetate film that was fireproof and more flexible. Most of the photographic films till the 1970’s were using this technology. The films used now come with T-grain emulsions. These are basically light sensitive silver halides in the shape of a T to render a fine grain pattern.

In the age of the digital cameras, it is hard to really imagine what next will come out of the Pandoras Box.

Instrument of Photography

Whenever you come across graphically detailed photographs like that of natural calamity, starvation, genocide, war etc, you will sense the impact of those pictures deep within your mind or soul. The desperation on the face of a dying child will make you cry, but imagine would capturing such intense moments have been possible if it weren’t for the invention of the camera? A photography device, the camera can capture images, as a single picture or as a sequence of pictures. In a photo camera, you can take single pictures. The camera goes back many years or centuries and derives its name from the Latin word called ‘Camera Obscura’ meaning the dark chamber.

The first photograph was created by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. He used a sliding wooden box camera designed and developed by Charles and Vincent Chevalier. But this was not the first discovery of the camera. Johann Zahn had actually built the first camera in 1685 and it was small and portable. It was the technology that was failing and it took almost 150 years for the technology to catch up with the camera.  

Most of the early photographic camera mechanisms were similar to that of Zahn's model. The mechanism relied heavily on the fact that every exposure required the insertion of a sensitized plate. This sensitized plate had to be placed in the front of the viewfinder so that it could record the image that was being shot. The daguerreotype process used copper plates for this purpose while the calotype process recorded the images on paper.

Any camera, in general, consists of an enclosed chamber that has an aperture to help let through the light from one end while a recording surface on the other end captures the light. Most of the cameras have a lens, which is positioned near the aperture so that it can collect the light and then focus the image onto a recording surface.

The optical property of each camera is different from the other, such as the optical property of the SLR is different from that of the regular Point and Shoot. You may have noticed at times that when you try to shoot a picture of the stars from a normal 35mm camera, you never get the picture. In some cameras, the range can easily be adjusted to fit in a long distance photograph. This process is also called focusing the camera. The point and shoot cameras have a fixed focus and they also use a small aperture and the wide angle lens to capture everything within a certain distance like within 10 feet. The cameras for long distance photography are termed as rangefinder cameras or even SLR (single lens reflex) camera. In an SLR, you can composition manually and also the focus. This can be achieved using the objective lens and a movable mirror to project or reflect the picture to a plastic micro-prism screen

Now photography is more technologically enabled and with the arrival of digital camera’s you can only guess, what next?

Color Photography – The Transition

Color is the essence to many things from photographs to a blooming flower to a deep blue ocean. The ability to take color photo prints has changed the world of photography in more ways than one but then it never used to be so colorful back in the early 19^th century.

In the initial days, film rolls and photography were in black & white format, but the search for color film rolls continued throughout the 19^th century. There were experiments conducted but the colors in the photographs could not be retained and they faded away fast. According to history, the first color photo was taken by James Clerk Maxwell, a physicist in 1861. One of the earliest methods of producing a color photograph was painstaking and a total of 3 cameras had to be used. Prokudin-Gorskii, in 1915, was the first one to use this process to take color photographs. He used a color filter and placed it in front of the lens for each of the three cameras. This way he was able to get three basic channels also famous as the RGB or Red, Green, and Blue. Prokudin-Gorskii followed this by another technique in which he utilized three-color plates, and used them in succession.

As more experiments continued, H. W. Vogel was able to produce emulsions in the early 20^th century that could generate the required sensitivity to red and green light. Later on, the Lumière brothers invented the very first color film called Autochrome. The Autochrome was launched in the market in 1907. This process involved the use of a screen plate filter, which dyed dots made from potato starch. The Autochrome was the only available color film until Agfa, the German company, introduced a color film in 1932 called the Agfacolor. Following its example, Kodak introduced an integrated tri-pack color film in 1935 and it was called the Kodachrome. Kodachrome was based on three color emulsions.

Following Kodachrome, Agfa in 1936, came out with Agfacolor Neue. Agfacolor Neue had color couplers that were integrated with emulsion layers and this simplified film processing and created an impact in the photography industry. All color films except for Kodak, are based on the Agfacolor Neue technology.

Creativity begets creativity! It can be proved from the fact that the Kodachrome color films were invented by Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr., two very accomplished musicians. Leopold Godowsky, Jr. was the son of one of the greatest pianists of his time, Leopold Godowsky.

Color photography actually revolutionized an era and brought out the impact of colors through vivid and detailed images including the ones from the World War II and the destruction caused by natural disasters. The color photographs captured emotions and the surroundings in such a way that they were being used more and more in newspapers, magazines and even for book covers.

Evolution of Photography

Photography! Who could have thought that we would now be able to take pictures through a digital camera and transfer to a computer and change the colors or any of the attributes of an image or a photograph? Digital cameras are sharper and provide high quality pictures that can be used over multiple mediums. Sir John Herschel is a man who invented the term ‘Photography’ in 1839. This was also the year when the process of Photography was unveiled to the public.

How did photography really evolve? Well! It is the bi-product of laws of physics and compounds of chemistry. The evolution of photography is a completely scientific process starting with the use of optics in the 1830’s.  The dark room or Camera Obscura existed some four hundred years back, while cameras were being used since the 11^th century and yet photography did not come into public use before the 1830’s.

There were different observations made by several people that finally led to putting together of all the missing pieces and this also announced the advent of photography. Some of those important observations are:

• In the 15^th century, Robert Boyle found out that silver chloride turned dark when exposed to air and not light.

• In the early 1800’s Angelo Sala observed that when silver nitrate powder is kept in the sun for long, it turns black.

• Around 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze made a discovery regarding colors. There were some liquids that changed their colors when they were exposed to light

• Thomas Wedgwood conducted some experiments in the early 19^th century. He had captured images but could make the images permanent.

• The first ever successful production of a photograph emerged in the June-July of 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The material used for this became hard when exposed to light for almost 8 hrs. Niépce went into a partnership with Louis Daguerre on 4^th Jan, 1829 to work further on this.

Four years later in 1833, Niépce died and Daguerre continued alone to discover how to develop photographic plates. Invention of the photographic plates meant that the exposure time was reduced considerably, from 8 hrs to 30 minutes. He also made another important observation and the conclusion drawn was that immersing an image in salt would make it permanent. Paul Delaroche, a leading French scholar made a report on this and the French government bought the rights in July 1839, and made it public on 19^th Aug, 1839. This process was named Daguerreotype after Louis Daguerre.

The Daguerreotype process was expensive and one time affair. At that time there were no negatives available and hence the original photograph could not be reproduced. The only way of getting two copies was by using two cameras side by side. This led to the growing need of finding a way to copy pictures and finally led to the invention of the Calotype process by William Henry Fox Talbot. Although the Daguerreotype was superior to the Calotype, the latter was able to provide multiple positive prints of a single picture in 1840.

This was the calling of a new dawn!

Photography in the Media

Photography is a hobby for many people and a professional for many others. Some people invest their time, energy and career in nature photography while some others do it for capturing the faces of injustice in a war torn country. Either ways photography plays a bigger role in bringing us closer to the world through pictures. Photojournalism is one such career that many people opt for as it fulfills the dual need of journalism and photography.

Photojournalism is referred as still photography though news channels and television journalists like to shoot a video, which is a technologically advanced form of photography.

New breeds of photographers have started experimenting with candid photography, which for all its commercial purpose has been a success. Photography has indeed branched out in so many niche applications that it can now be seen as a full-fledged career option.

The credit goes to photojournalism, as this was the starting career option until it branched out into various other forms. The first event related photography can be dated back to the 1850’s and they were being printed as engravings. Some of the famous events like the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856 led to some pioneering works in photography by Roger Fenton and William Simpson. The latter worked with the Illustrated London News. Their photographs of the War were engraved before they were published. The same was the case with Matthew Brady who took photographs of the American Civil War as they were engraved first before being printed in Harper’s Weekly. Some of the most acclaimed photographs were also displayed in Museums like the Fratelli Alinari - Archivi Alinari, George Eastman House, German Historical Museum, Helios, Museum Of Modern Art, New York and many more.

The Daily Graphic, New York published the first half tone photograph on March 4, 1880. This also meant that photographs don’t have to be engraved anymore before being published. Through progressive innovations, by 1897 it was possible to print a halftone photograph on the printing press. Many innovations later, with the dawn of 1930 started the Golden age of photojournalism. The commercial 35mm Leica camera was developed in 1925, and the flash bulbs followed between 1927 and 1930 to mark the start of the Golden era. The Golden age between 1930 and 1950 helped magazines and newspapers build their reputation and readership through news articles with photographs. This was also the time when Mother Dorothea Lange brought out seminal photos of the Great Depression.

After the Golden age, in 1960 many other innovations took photography to a new level. The camera’s now had electronic flash, auto-focus, motor drives, good lenses and other enhancements that made it easier to take pictures of objects, people and motion. Then the micro-drive was introduced and it helped photographers store hundreds of positives on a single chip. Today, technology has gone many steps ahead by bringing in digital cameras through which photographers can not only take hundreds of picture and save it but they can also change the background or improve the color with the help of computer software. We are truly in a digital world today where photography has adorned a three dimensional change.

Know your camera - A survey carried out recently shows that 65% of camera users (notice the avoidance of the use of the word 'photographer') only ever use one button on their cameras; also known as the 'shutter'. So if you are one of them, it's time to learn more about this amazing tool. If you learn to use it well, it will eventually be an extension of you. Then watch your pictures dramatically improve.