HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PART 1

Photography. Now for the 21^st century it is not an innovation. We used to make some pictures when we have the moment that we want to capture and remember for a long period of time. Today it is prettty simple because, you can take photos at each step and whereever you want. All you need is your smartphone. Just unlock it and then open a camera, now you can capture the world as you see it. In just a couple of minutes you will have tens of new photographes. But, had you ever thought about why and how photocameras had been created or about historical facts and researches on this theme? Now I want to tell you about the history of photography.

Everything had started by the scientist Sir John F.W Herschel in 1839. He was the first who used therm "Photography". Photography is a word derived from the Greek words photos ("light") and graphein ("to draw"). It is a method of recording images by the action of light or related radiation into a sensitive material.

THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH: On a summer day in 1827, Joseph Niecephore Niepce developed the first photographic image with a cameraobscura. Prior to Niepce, people just used the camera obscurafor viewing or drawing purposes, not for making photographs. By letting light draw the picture, Niepce's heliographs, or sun prints as they were called, were the prototype for the modern photograph.

Niepce placed an engraving into a metal plate coated in bitumen and then exposed it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image, until then invisible, appeared/

However, Niepce's photograph required eight hours of light exposure to create and would soon fade away.

DAGUERRE AND NIEPCE: Daguerre was the inventor of the first practical process of photography in 1829, he formed a partnershipcwith Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed. In 1839, followingseveral years of experimentation and Niepce's death, Daguerre developed a more confident and effective method of photography and named it after himself.

Daguerre's daguerrotype process started by fixing the images into a sheet of silver-plated copper. Then he polished the silver and ccoated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sencetive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image that would not change if exposed to light.

In 1839, Daguerre and Niepce's son sold the rights for the daguerreotype to the French goverment and published a booklet describing the process. The daguerreotype gained popularity quickly and by 1850, there were over seventy daguerreotype studios in New York City.

WET PLATE NEGATIVES: In 1851, Frederick Scoff Archer, an English sculptor, invented the wet plate negative. Using a viscous solution of collodion, he coated glass with light-sensitive silver salts.

Because it was glass and not paper, This wet plate created a more stable and detailed negative.

Photography advanced considerably once sensitized matherials could be coated on a plate glass. However, wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. In the field, this meant carrying along portable darkroom.

DRY PLATE NEGATIVES AND HAND-HELD CAMERAS: In 1879, the dry plate was invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelattin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time. This meant photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms and could now hire technicians to develop their photographs. Dry processes absorbed light so rapidly that the hand-held camera was now possible.

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS: In the early 1940s, commercially viable color films were bought to the market. These films used the modern tecnology of dye-coupled colors in which a chemical process connects the three dye layers  together to create an apparent color image.

Article about 20 first photos from the history of phography: https://petapixel.com/2015/05/23/20-first-photos-from-the-history-of-photography/

The History of Photography in 5 Minutes