The History Of Photography
The first photo made in a camera was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827. The image shows the view from an upstairs window at Niépce's estate, Le Gras, in the Burgundy region of France.
Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. The way it works is that due, to optical laws, the light coming through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, i.e. the wall of the box. The image was mirrored and upside down, however, so basically everything that makes today's analogue camera's principles different to camera obscura ones are the mirrors and the film which is used to capture and preserve the image created by the light |
Born in 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce enjoyed a comfortable, middle-class upbringing. After careers teaching and serving in the military, he returned home in 1801 to manage his family estate, Le Gras. Niépce developed an interest in science when he began working with his brother, Claude, on various experiments and inventions.
As early as 1793, the brothers had discussed the possibility of using light to reproduce images. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's earliest experiments in this direction began in 1816. His progress was slow because photography was not his sole, or even his primary, interest. |
Shortly thereafter, Niepce partnered with a Parisian artist named Louis Daguerre and began further investigations and refinements into Niepce’s process. Sadly, Niepce passed away in 1833 but luckily left his notes entirely to Daguerre who continued working. Louis favored a silver-based processes and used plates with silver coatings which were exposed to iodine fumes. The iodine reacted with the silver and produced a coating of photosensitive silver iodide on the plates.
The major innovation of Daguerre’s process was the discovery that by applying mercury fumes to the exposed silver plate he could actually make the “latent” image visible on the plate thus reducing the lengthy exposure times of previous methods. Now, exposures could be measured in minutes instead of days.
The major innovation of Daguerre’s process was the discovery that by applying mercury fumes to the exposed silver plate he could actually make the “latent” image visible on the plate thus reducing the lengthy exposure times of previous methods. Now, exposures could be measured in minutes instead of days.
This image is considered to be the first intentional portrait of a human being made… ever. The subject and photographer is Robert Cornelius. an American who worked in metal polishing and silver plating. Cornelius had became interested in the Daguerreotype process and sought to refine the technique using his knowledge of chemistry and metallurgical composition. In either October or November of 1839, Cornelius stood outside of his family’s store and made what would be the first selfie. On the back of the photo he wrote “The first light picture ever taken.” Though not entirely accurate, Cornelius was correct in that his photo would go down in history as the first time a person was intentionally imaged using light.
Unknown to Cornelius, there had already been an image made that included human beings, although that was not the original intention. About two years earlier the evolution of photography had already taken one of its greatest leaps forward. In the Spring of 1838, Daguerre made a photograph of the bustling Boulevard du Temple in Paris. The long exposure time made everything that was moving literally vanish from the frame due to motion. It was only two people, a man having his boots shined and the shiner, who remained still long enough to be recorded in the photo. Those two people would never know that they were in fact the first humans to be photographed in history.