L A – Delving Deeper Into the History of Photography Q1 – MY REFLECTIVE JOURNAL by May Linn Nirisrud

TASK

Pick three events in the timeline from this weeks lesson “History of photography; An Introduction” and find photographs of the event on the internet or in the library and write a paragraph explaining the event in more detail. Include your photographs in the description.

The Pinhole camera:

Pinhole photography is lensless photography.

It is a simple camera.

A box with a tiny round shaped hole (pinhole) on one side and a film or photographic paper on the opposite side. When light passes through the hole an image is formed in the camera.

The first photograph

The First Photograph, or the earliest known surviving photograph made in a camera, was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827. The image was captured via a process known as heliography. Which used Bitumen of Judea coated onto a piece of glass or metal. The Bitumen hardened in proportion to the amount of light that hit it.

The picture was taken from this window and are called “View from the Window at Le Gras” He used a coated pewter plate and uncapped the lens. After 8 hours he removed the plate and washed the latent image with a combination of oil of lavender and white petroleum.

This is the result:

Louis Daguerre

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and chemist who is famous for the invention of the photographic process daguerreotype. This process produces images by allowing the light to act on a chemically treated silver or copper plate.

He started a collaboration with the famous Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1929. Niepce called his picture-making process heliography. He managed to produce a permanent image, but the exposure time was around 8 hours.

Niepce died in 1833.

Daguerre continued to experiment with copper plates coated with silver iodide to produce direct positive pictures. Daguerre discovered that the latent image on an exposed plate could be brought out or “developed” with the fumes from warmed mercury. The use of mercury vapour meant that photographic images could be produced in twenty to thirty minutes rather than hours.

In 1837, Daguerre found a way of “fixing” the photographic images with a solution of common salt.

Daguerre began making successful pictures using his improved process. On 19th August,1839, at a meeting in Paris, the Daguerreotype Process was revealed to the world.