History of Photography Exam
Artists reaction to photography
Artists reacted differently to the appearance of photography. Many portrait painters, thinking photography would make their medium obsolete, tried to take advantage of the new medium incorporating it with painting; others renounced to painting altogether and became involved with Daguerrotype or paper photography. Other painters, Ingres being one of the most prominent among them, although outspokenly denying photography's claims as art and the rights of photographers to legal protection, nevertheless started taking advantage of photography to make a record of their own work, as well as to provide themselves with source material for poses and backgrounds while denying its influence. Painters at this time, felt the threat presented by a potentially rival visual medium and were faced with finding ways to use the photograph, whether they admitted doing so or not. The most significant transformation in painting resulted by artists starting to find new ways to delineate form and new areas of expression worthy of depiction. Although tenuous at the beginning, the interconnections between graphic and photographic representation have gained strength over time and continue to invigorate both media.
David Wojnarowicz
As a political artist working on controversial topics, Wojnarowicz received frequent criticism and his work was often attacked as obscene
Shutter speed
At the most fundamental level, a shutter is a device to open and close an opening on the camera, to let light fall on the film. Earliest "shutters", in days when typical exposures were counted in whole seconds and even minutes, were simply lens caps that were taken off and removed from the camera. Later these became dedicated timing mechanisms that were able to open and close at precise intervals. Typically, modern film cameras employ one of two types of shutters: focal plane or central. A focal plane shutter consists of two curtains that travel across the frame just in front of the film. Central shutters are most often located within the lens, usually between groups of optical elements. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but in general focal plane shutters can produce shorter exposures, while central ones are generally more flexible with flash photography.
Dada
Attacked high-art conventions and dominant political powers with popular ingredients (i.e. mass produced objects, mass-media images, and assorted rubbish)
Lens aperature, depth of field
"Aperture" refers to the size of the opening in the lens that allows light to enter the camera. The larger the opening, the more light enters, and the less time is required to obtain the desired exposure level. Aperture size also affects "depth of field", or the distance from the camera within which objects appear to be in focus. Shallower depth of field means that only some objects in a scene may be in sharp focus, while others will be rendered softly. Greater depth of field means that objects at various distances will be sharp.
Hippolyte Bayard
(1801-87), France, provided the world with the first public exhibition of photographs, in 1839. He invented a direct positive process that allowed paper prints to be taken inside the camera. He also made this image, the world's first-known self portrait, which he titled "Self-Portrait of a Dying Man" because he felt he was being overshadowed by his more famous countryman, Daguerre, whose processes the French government favored. On the back of this photograph, he wrote a fake suicide note
Eadweard Muybridge
(1830-1904), England, used several psuedonyms before changing his name from Muggeridge to Muybridge and then moving to America, where he became a landscape photographer. His focus was the American West, particularly Yosemite. The image below is from Lookout Point at Yosemite in 1867. He is also known for using stereoscopic wires fired by tripwires to establish that a horse can, indeed, have all four feet off the ground simultaneously at a gallop, which we will address later, when we talk about stop motion photography. He also photographed San Francisco, Alaska, and lighthouses on the western coast of the U.S.A, always showing the expansiveness and ruggedness of the natural features of the landscape, with humans dwarfed by comparison.
Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, de Stijl
Analyze the geometric structures believed to underlie visible reality
Alfred Stieglitz
(1864-1946), U.S. A, started taking photographs in Berlin, where he worked as a freelance photographer before returning to the U.S. He established the magazine dedicated to photography, Camera Work, in 1903 and published 50 editions before it ceased publication in 1917. He is known for promoting pictorialism, a kind of photography that he said was "a distinctive medium of individual expression." This led to a split among photographers, between those seeking to make photographs that looked like paintings and those wanting to merely use the light available to capture reality. In other words, for the first time, photography was regarded as an art form and not merely as a means of capturing the reality of the world on film. Even this photograph, "The Steerage," which is often promoted as one of the greatest photographs of all time, has elements of documentary (of immigrants leaving the steerage section of a ship) and artistic aestheticism.
Edward Steichen
(1879-1973), Luxembourg, immigrated with his family to the USA during his teenaged years. Like Man Ray, he experimented with darkroom processes, producing "pictorial" painterly photographs in his early career before moving on to explore symbolism. He also worked as a fashion photographer and the emerging genre of advertising photography. Edward Steichen later served as lead curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), organizing nearly 50 photographic exhibitions, including "The Family of Man" in 1955.
Edward Weston
(1886-1958), USA, began taking pictures with a camera gifted him by his father as a teenager. He gained fame as a painter before focusing exclusively on photography. He often photographed dancers and movie stars, producing sharp, crisp images that he never enlarged, so as to maintain their focus. Later, he moved on to landscape photography, and was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1937. These sand dunes show the type of contrast between light and dark that made him famous.
Man Ray
(1890-1976), USA, used a nickname rather than his real name (Emmanuel Rudnitsky). He is known for his photograms, a image capturing process that occurs in the darkroom, without a camera, and for experimenting with photographic genres such as "readymades," which we will discuss in a later module, surrealism (as in the photograph showing the woman's artificial tears), and solarization, another darkroom process, this one involving the deliberate exposure of negatives to light in order to reverse the tonal values (the photograph of the man in profile).
Dorthea Lange
(1895-1965), USA, became famous for her photographs of migrant workers during the Great Depression. She photographed men standing in bread lines after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, sharecroppers working on land they did not own, and seasonal farm laborers, highlighting the plight of the human condition during an era when changing agricultural practices left many homeless and living in dire poverty.
Weegee
(1899-1968), Austria Gallicia (aka Ukraine), worked under his nickname, but his legal name was Arthur Fellig. He and his family immigrated to New York when he was a child. His specialty was crime scenes, and he installed a darkroom in the trunk of his car in order to develop photographs quickly and sell them immediately to newspapers. His photographs of dead gangsters, hit and runs, sex workers, homeless people, and nighttime city scenes made him famous.
Ansel Adams
(1902-1984), USA, his interest in photography started when he was a teenager, and he went on to become the world's most famous landscape photographer. His distinctive style relies on F/64, the smallest camera aperture setting on a large-format camera, the type he used regularly. He also calculated exposure times using the "zone system," a darkroom process that enhances tonal values. His photographs of America's national parks are world famous today.
Robert Capa
(1913-1954), Hungary, used several names before choosing the pseudonym "Robert Capa" to market his photographs. His photographs of World War II battles made him famous, though controversy surrounded him up until he died.
Bernd and Hilla Becher
(1931-2007; 1934-2015), Germany, were a husband and wife photography team known for their photographs of architectural structures, especially ones that were being demolished as antiquated or outdated. They often grouped a number of these types of photographs together, for greater effect. Today, they are recognized for their contributions to minimalism and their work with students at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.
Annie Leibovitz
(1949- ), USA, started taking photographs in the Philippines, where her father was stationed in the military. Known for taking photographs of rock stars, she worked for a decade at the Rolling Stone magazine, during which time she took her famous photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. You may also know her image of Demi Moore, who posed nude and pregnant. Her photographs are flattering but unconventional, making them memorable and striking.
Cindy Sherman
(1954- ), USA, began photographing in the mid 1970s, creating her "Untitled Film Stills" series using herself as the model and exploring woman's life in a male dominated society, and often depicting woman as the subject of male desire. Her work is studied today in many college classes, with thousands writing papers about her, especially in relation to gender studies.
Felice Beato
1860, Félice Beato began taking pictures of corpses—but only of the forces fighting against the British Empire in India. Like Beato, Brady's photographs were different from Fenton's, as he showed war in all of its ugliness. Early war photographer known for photographing the 1857 Indian Mutiny, the siege of Lucknow (India) in 1858, the 1860 capture of Tientsin (China), and other pivotal points of nineteenth century warfare. This photograph, "The Interior of Fort Taku" was taken in 1860. He also lectured on photography and influenced many other photographers toward photojournalism.
Mo Ti
5th century Chinese scholar - a Chinese scholar, noted that light reflecting off an object and then passing through a pin hole into a darkened enclosed space (like a box) produced an inverted but otherwise exact image of the object.
Alzahan
A 10th century Arabian scholar - figured out that it was possible to focus the image, or make it sharper, by making a smaller aperture, while a larger aperture resulted in a more diffuse image.
Gold chloride
A man in France discovered a way of making the daguerreotype plate more stable, by gilding it with gold chloride. This process added an intensity to daguerreotype images that was previously lacking.
Diana camera
A plastic-bodied toy camera
Aristotle
A western philosopher - described the phenomenon when he viewed a partial eclipse. He saw the crescent shape of the eclipse on the ground as the light was being filtered through the openings of the leaves in a tree. Using a sieve, he was able to reproduce the same result as light passed through the tiny holes. Aristotle wrote, "sunlight traveling through small openings between the leaves of a tree, the holes of a sieve, the openings wickerwork, and even interlaced fingers will create circular patches of light on the ground." Aristotle and the ancient Chinese observed that images produced by this method (whether naturally occurring or man-made) were actually upside down and backwards from the object casting the image.
Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes
Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) owned a photographic firm in Boston that specialized in daguerreotypes. They photographed many famous people, (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Sam Houston, Charles Sumner, Daniel Webster, etc.), with an emphasis on distinguishing the private individual from the public persona. In addition to photographing the first public demonstration of the use of ether as a general anesthetic (first as a staged recreation then during an actual operation).
Andres Serrano
American artist notorious for the controversial content of his photographic works...in the late 1980s his practice was highlighted as an example of work that was deliberately confrontational and designed to shock the audience
Robert Mapplethorpe
American photographer who was noted for austere photographs of flowers, celebrities, and male nudes; among the latter were some that proved controversial because of their explicitly homoerotic and sadomasochistic themes
Sally Mann
American photographer whose powerful images of childhood, sexuality, and death were often deemed controversial
Camera bodies
And of course, camera bodies were changing too, as manufacturers competed for photographers' business. Since their invention in the early 1800s, there have been more than 40,000 kinds of cameras developed! The Camera Heritage Museum has more than 6000 cameras on display.
Pinhole Camera
Basically, the first cameras were nothing more than a pinhole camera. A simple definition of such a camera is "a camera with a pinhole aperture and no lens." These are very simple cameras that can be made at home with almost anything than can be made light-tight. For example, cereal boxes, oatmeal boxes, show boxes, rigid material such as mat board, etc. A few things they all have in common: they all keep light out except through a tiny hole (aperture) in the front which collects light from whatever direction it is pointed. They all have a "pinhole" for the light to enter in. The size of this hole matters. The smaller the hole the more focused the light, which means a crisper image. A larger opening tends to give a softened image. All pinhole cameras all have some medium to capture the light (photo paper or film). This needs to be loaded into the camera in a darkroom so as not to ruin the medium by exposing it to light. The pinhole needs to be covered in some manner when bringing it out of the darkroom (this can be done with black tape or even your finger if you are going to use it immediately). When ready to expose the light sensitive material, the photographer simply uncovers the pinhole (the length of time varies based on lighting and medium) and then, when the exposure time is complete, covers it back up. One more thing about pinhole cameras. It is a good idea to have the inside of the box black or some dark color. Although light travels in straight lines it can be reflected by other objects. White tends to reflect light easier than black. As a matter of fact, black absorbs light meaning that it does not reflect it. Other colors could cause the light to bounce around inside the camera in unpredictable ways causing multiple exposures on the light sensitive surface. A black interior surface ensures that the camera will record only the light that is coming through the pinhole and falling onto the photo paper or film.
The Pencil of Nature
Book produced by William Fox Talbot in 1844 - describes his invention and reproduces many of his early photos.
Capturing Light
Capturing a permanent image created by light focused on a particular area. Essentially, that's what a camera does: it allows light to enter in to a dark space in order to capture the image of what that light bounced off of on its way into the aperture of the camera.
Readymades
Challenges our definition of art as unique by selecting works that are mass produced and then photographing them in ways that re-present them to viewers and complicate notions of taste and beauty
Salted paper print
Developing a paper that would be light sensitive and record the image automatically. Sodium chloride solution and then applied a layer of silver nitrate. When these substances mixed together, they formed silver chloride and infused the paper.
Uses of Photography
During and after the Civil War, photography was becoming more and more commercialized. Uses of photography included land surveys, documentary of natural sites, ancient civilizations, and aboriginal people, and human progress. Pictures were taken of railways and buildings under construction, waterfalls, deserts, telegraph and telephone poles and wires, animals in their natural habitats and in zoos, and almost anything else you can imagine. These pictures appeared in newspapers and magazines, on postcards, in public exhibitions and museums, and in private galleries and photograph albums. Today, millions of photographs provide a rich historical record of the era.
Etienne Marey and Eadweard Muybridge
Early experiments with motion involved Etienne Marey, a physiologist in France, and Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer in America. Marey wanted a camera that could take a series of photographs on one plate. At first, he had men dress in black clothing with white lines painted on their extremities. Then, as they walked or ran in front of a black background, he photographed their movements. This led him to photograph animals, with multiple images on the same plate, so that the full range of their motion was evident.
Size
Film comes in a number of standard sizes, of which 35mm daylight loading cassettes are most common. Larger sizes include type 120 medium-format films and sheet films in sizes such as 4x5", 5x7" and 8x10". Even if this is the bulk of the market, only technical prowess (and unfortunately financial capacity) prevents a photographer from either adjusting these sizes or making his or her own materials.
Substrate
Finally, while films constitute the bulk of the photographic materials using for recording scenes, other media have been used, and continue to be used by some photographers. The most common alternative to film is photographic enlarging paper, but others include metal plates (tintypes, daguerreotypes), glass plates (dry plates, collodion wet plates). Photographic emulsions can also be applied to fabrics, and even everyday objects. That said, these types of experiments constitute a tiny fraction of the work being done with analog photography.
George Washington Wilson and Edward Anthony
First photographs to record people in motion in 1859 by George Washington Wilson, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and by Edward Anthony, in New York city.
Roger Fenton
First war photographer; took pictures of the Crimea War in the 1850s. Crimean War photographs didn't show any bodies.
Focus
Focusing means simply adjusting the distance between the film and lens to produce a sharp image of the object or objects being photographed. With most cameras, this is as far as one can go, though adjustable focal plane cameras, such as view and field cameras, can greatly expand the possibilities by altering the geometry of the camera itself.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
French inventor who established his place in photographic history with the first known photograph. Niépce used a Bitumen process (a type of asphalt that hardens with exposure to light) to produced a "direct positive" on a piece of metal or glass. In 1826/1827 he used a camera obscura to expose a piece of pewter covered with Bitumen aimed outside his window. He was able to capture an image that was permanently fixed on the piece of metal. We still have this "photo" today - it is titled View from his Window at Le Gras. The image took about eight hours to acquire and, since the sun moved from east to west during that time, does not have a great amount of detail. Niépce's process was called Heliography.
Tierney Gearon
Her work became an overnight sensation when images of her children came under public scrutiny. Since her controversial debut, Gearon has been pushing the envelope of contemporary photography
Fauvism and Expressionism
Identified with the artist's emotional responses to the world and the self
Louis Daguerre
In 1829, a Frenchman worked on a process that produced a direct positive on a polished piece of metal. The Daguerreotype, as it was and is called, was able to capture a lot more detail and gave a much crisper image than that of Niépce's print. Louis Daguerre was an artist and worked on perfecting his photographic process. His process rendered such a good likeness of the subject being photographed that it caught on quickly. Once the age of photography started taking off (and made its way across the ocean to America) the Daguerreotype was the most used process for many years. For his contributions to the field, Daguerre has been dubbed the father of photography.
Louis Phiippe
In 1833, The King of France, gave Daguerro an annual pension of 6000 francs. Daguerre published a manual that described the steps involved, with the result that roughly 9000 copies were sold in the first three months. This manual, paired with a camera (another recent invention we'll discuss later), put daguérrotyping into the hands of the general public. All it took was a camera, metal plates, chemicals, the manual, and a little ingenuity, and anyone could become a photographer.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
In 1862, after Oliver Wendell Holmes attended Brady's exhibition of photographs of the battle of Antietam, Holmes wrote: "Let him who wishes to know what war is, look at this series of illustrations. These wrecks of manhood thrown together in careless heaps or ranged in ghastly rows for burial were alive but yesterday. . . . It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look at these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us. . . "
A. S. Wolcott and John Johnson
In March 1840, they opened the first commercial photography studio, in New York; using a system of mirrors, they could take pictures with a lensless camera. Wolcott and Johnson advertised their products as "Sun Drawn Miniatures".
Negative
Invented by Henry Fox Talbot Method of permanently storing images and producing multiple copies of the same print from a "negative"
Calotype
Invented by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, aka photogenic drawing. First, he soaked his paper in a weak mixture of sodium chloride (i.e. table salt) and water, then removed the paper from the water and let it dry. Then, in a dark room, he coated the that paper with silver nitrate (mixed in a 1:6 or 1:8 ratio) to make it photo (or light) sensitive. This paper would then be put in the camera obscura with a covering over the aperture. The camera would be put into the desired position and the cover over the aperture removed. After exposing the paper to light, the paper needed to be taken back to a dark room and treated with another salt solution so that it was no longer light sensitive.
Digital Photography
Jim Pomeroy defined digital photography, saying, "Digital Photography can be defined as the electronic recording of visual information such that it can be recalled, viewed, processed, transmitted, and reproduced by means of computer memory and storage" (Pomeroy). He also stated that, "Digital photography will not replace 'chemical' photography any more than photography replaced painting" (Pomeroy). That may be true, but chemical photography is fast becoming an art form, not a process by which customers can have their photographs turned into prints. If someone wants a printed photo, they merely use a color printer to produce it, so that dark rooms and film processing are no longer part of the process. The Kodak DCS-100 was the first Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR). It was a modified Nikon where the film chamber and film winder were altered to make room for a sensor. The camera boasted 1.3 megapixels and an external data storage unit that the photographer carried around using a shoulder strap. It could be yours for $20,000, and the shoulder strap was included in the price.
Measuring the light
Knowing how much light is in a scene is crucial to achieving predictable results in photography. In the earliest days of the medium, photographers relied on experience to determine the exposure needed to produce optimal results. Since then, technology for measuring light has evolved, and most cameras produced since the 1970s have had built-in light meters, often coupled with automatic exposure systems.
Samuel F. B. Morse, Dr. John W. Draper
Samuel F. B. Morse, a portrait painter, and Dr. John W. Draper, a chemist, discovered a way to capture likenesses in less than ten seconds. All of these developments allowed people to sit for portraits without the aid of mechanical devices aimed at preventing movement. With reduced exposure times and better images, people were willing to start paying to have their photos taken. Morse and Draper taught other photographers their process and soon portraiture studios were springing up all across America.
Roger Bacon, Reinerius Gemma-Frisius, Leonardo da Vinci
Scholars - experimented with optical phenomena in the 13th through 16th centuries.
Lenses added to cameras
Lenses have given photographers a means to focus light in a more effective way, with added control to the focus. Shortly after Daguerre invented his process of capturing light in his camera obscura, a man named Charles L. Chevalier made a lens to attach to the camera obscura. While lenses and their abilities had been experimented with since the 1500s, Chevalier built on those experiments and perfected the lens for the camera. The lens was limited to apertures sizes of f/14 and f/15, which required long exposure times (hours or even days). As with most inventions, experimentation led to transformation of the product. By 1840 Chevalier had developed a lens with an aperture of f/6 which cut the exposure times quite a bit. Others in the newly established photographic world would seek to improve upon the lens. For instance, a man named Joseph (Josef) Max Petzval (1807-1891) improved upon Chevalier's invention (later in 1840) and came up with a far superior "portrait" lens. In 1858, John Waterhouse began experimenting with adjusting the aperture, and over the next thirty years, apertures of different sizes could be inserted into the camera. Finally, after 30 years of experimenting, the adjustable aperture was developed. After that, the next leap in photographic lenses took place around 1930, during World War I. At this time the reverse telephoto lens began to be produced, which allowed for "close-ups." Other developments include the invention of plastic, acrylic, and plexiglass lenses, which allowed for lighter cameras, and the development of zoom lenses, a form of reverse lens with a tighter focus.
Leica
Made during world war 1. Camera made of acrylic for a lighter weight
Brownie
Made for the general population. Came pre-loaded with film that could be mailed in for processing
Daguerréotypomanie
Many people in France and around the world began capturing images that it created a craze. Daguérrotyping produced only a single print, but that print was on a thin metal plate that made it highly durable.
Matthew Brady
Matthew Brady (1822-1896), a Civil War Photographer, is often called the father of photojournalism. In 1861, at the beginning of the war, photography had existed for only 20 years. Brady had been involved with photography since his early twenties, as owner of a portrait studio and photographer of many famous Americans, like Presidents Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln. He won many awards for his daguerreotype portraits and kept up with the latest photographic developments. By the time of the Civil War, more than 10,000 portraits had been taken in his studios. When the war broke out, he assembled a team of photographers, provided mobile darkrooms, and sent them out to take photographs of soldiers that could be sold as souvenirs. While he spent most of the war working in his studio in New York, his teams of photographers (as many as twenty teams) took pictures that were credited to him, as their employer.
Zoogyroscope
Muybridge took these still photographs and mounted them on a child's toy (a zoetrope), as he knew to do because Marey had done something similar. In 1879, he showed his "moving" images on a screen at Stanford University, in California by having light pass through a large rotating glass disc with the images moving around it. He called his motion picture device a "zoögyroscope" or "zoöpraxiscope." This device essentially tricks the human eye into seeing motion because the images are moving so quickly. Thus, he is credited with making the first movie, or motion picture. By Eadweard Muybridge, originally taken from his Human and Animal Locomotion series, (plate 626, thoroughbred bay mare "Annie G." galloping) published 1887 by the University of Pennsylvania. Both Marey and Muybridge built cameras with moving plates that would take sequential images of action. Soon, action photographs were quite common, as other photographers starting taking pictures of anything that moved--horses, humans, trains, animals, etc. Marey, Muybridge, and these other photographers continued to develop technologies and processes that improved the quality of their motion photographs. Their visionary work on capturing motion initiated the film industry a generation later.
Camera Obscura
Naturally occurring phenomenon that photography is based upon. Light reflecting off object and passing through a pinhole into a darkened enclosed space. Describes an apparatus (piece of equipment) or the phenomenon itself. Darkened room or chamber.
Monochrome or color
One of the most fundamental choices a photographer has to make is whether the final image is to be monotone ("black and white") or color. Black and white photography was the standard in the first century after its invention, though even there "black" meant anything from true black to the polished silver of daguerreotypes, the sepia of salt prints, and pretty much every color one can imagine, thanks to chemical toning and hand coloring. Color photography, which really came into its own after the Second World War, uses a complex layering of silver gelatin emulsions, color filters and dyes to create a close approximation of the colors most people see in everyday life.
Early cameras
Operated with only apertures--no lenses--for light to enter.
Improvements inside the camera
Other improvements were occurring inside the camera. For instance, photographers moved from using glass and metal surfaces as the medium to capture light to using paper coated with light sensitive materials. Later, film was developed, meaning that multiple copies of the same image could be made from a reverse negative. Finally, as cameras moved into the digital age, electronic light sensors replaced film, so that digital images are captured on memory cards inside the camera.
Photographic materials
Photographers have used a variety of materials to make images, including plastic film, glass plates, collodion (essentially gun cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol), gelatin, albumen, starch, as well as a variety of compounds of silver, gold, platinum, palladium, chromium, mercury and gold. There is very little that someone hasn't tried using in photography. Of those that have produced workable results, the most popular are plastic base films with silver compounds dispersed in gelatin. However, even within this seemingly narrow category, the choices are very impressive.
Sensitivity
Photographic materials (for the sake of simplicity let's call it "film", since that is the most popular medium) come in various grades of sensitivity to light. Generally speaking, the "faster" the film, the more sensitive it is to light, but the larger grain it will exhibit. Slower films make smoother, finer-grained images, but sacrifice the ability to capture quick-moving scenes in dimmer light.
Positive or negative
Photographic materials produce either "positive" images that have a direct relationship to the intensity of light in the photographed scene, or "negatives", where that relationship is reversed. Most of the time, positives are used for viewing directly or mechanical reproduction, while negatives are used to make final, positive images by exposing other negative materials through them, therefore reversing the light-to-dark relationship once again.
Setting the exposure
Photographic materials react to light predictably within a certain range of exposure to light. When "correctly" exposed, they record the greatest possible amount of detail in both light and shadow areas, and generally have the greatest range of tones between the two. However, for various reasons, including availability of light and artistic expression, photographers sometimes choose to allow more or less light than the "ideal" amount to fall on their photosensitive materials. Both will generally result in a compressed tonal range, meaning images that do not include the full range of values from black to white. The ability to consciously adapt exposure to the intended effect is one of the most fundamental skills of a photographer. While light metering systems and camera automation continue to advance, a light meter has no way of knowing what a photographer wants the image to convey. A photograph intended to capture the maximum amount of technical detail may need a different level of exposure than one meant to convey the mood of a place, even in the same location and with the same amount of light present. It is all a question of intent, and until cameras can read photographers' minds, it is definitely useful to understand exposure thoroughly. Traditional silver-gelatin emulsion film reacts to light by turning darker the more it is exposed. This relationship between exposure and the resulting tone depends on a lot of factors, including the sensitivity of the material and the development process, but in the broadest therms within a "normal" range is predictable and linear. This means that adding exposure will increase the density of the silver deposit on the film by a predictable amount. However, this is true within a certain range of light levels, called the film's exposure range or latitude. At very low light levels, the film will not react at all, while above it all the available silver compounds in the film will be converted to metallic silver and further exposure will not result in any further change. It is important for a practicing photographer to know these limits. Conventionally, exposure is expressed in "stops". Each stop is equivalent to doubling the amount of light of the stop below it and halving that of the one above. Most cameras control the amount of light entering using an aperture, which controls the amount of light entering, and a shutter, which controls the amount of time for which the light is allowed to enter the camera. Each of these devices is calibrated in stops, to make it easy to adjust exposures quickly and efficiently. Aperture stops are labeled with "f" numbers, where the "f" stands for the lens's focal length. This means that an f/2 aperture is half the size of the lens focal length, and f/4 means one fourth of "f". This makes it easy to compare apertures of lenses of different focal lengths. In modern cameras, the sequence of stops, with each halving the amount of light entering compared to the previous one, is f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, and so on. Notice that the numbers themselves double every other one - that is because the amount of light is determined by the aperture's area, not its diameter. An aperture twice the diameter of another will have an area four times as big, and will therefore let in four times as much light. Shutters, on the other hand, are usually labeled as the denominators of the fraction of a second for which they are open. So a shutter speed of 1/250 will be shown simply as "250" on an adjustment knob or display, while "30" typically means 1/30 of a second. In cameras where the shutter can be set for times above one second, the whole second times are typically a different color than the fractional ones to avoid confusion. The typical progression of shutter speeds on modern cameras is 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000 and so on, each being half the duration of the previous one. With the total amount of light striking the film determined by both the aperture size and the shutter speed, exposures are typically given as a combination of the two numbers. For instance, on a sunny day in moderate lattitudes, an ISO 125 film might be exposed for 1/125s at an aperture of f/16. Since each stop on either device means a doubling or a halving of the exposure, the above combination is equivalent to an exposure of 1/250s at f/11, or 1/1000s at f/5.6. This allows a photographer to vary the final look of the image, while maintaining the same exposure. Faster shutter speeds will "freeze" motion better, while smaller apertures (i.e. ones with larger "f" numbers) will allow greater depth of field. It is also possible to change the exposure from the "correct" level indicated by the light meter. Underexposure, which in the example above might be 1/500s at f/16, will emphasize detail in the light areas of the image while compressing it in the shadows. Overexposure will do the opposite - dark shadows will have fuller detail than normal, while light areas might lose information. Regardless of the particular intent of the image, it is worth remembering that while modern light meters and camera exposure systems are great at setting "correct" exposures, equipment manufacturers calibrate these for average conditions. Taking a picture in a coal mine or a sun-blasted snowy slope diverge from "typical" conditions significantly, and in order to achieve predictable results a knowledgeable photographer will adjust the exposure in each instance. In the examples above, since coal is black, it will fool the light meter into "thinking" that there is less light in the scene than there really is, resulting in overexposure. Muddy snow scenes are often the result of a photographer letting a camera do its own thing, where the large amount of light reflected from the snow tells the system that the scene is far more brightly lit than it is in reality. Again, there is no substitute for conscious choice. Though the earliest experimenters with capturing light were focused on merely finding ways of making images of the world around them, photographers today make deliberate choices--from the kinds of cameras and lenses, the types of film, the various mediums they print on, etc. Knowing the techniques and technologies behind photography helps you better appreciate the finished product and the many people who have contributed to the field throughout the years.
Photojournalism
Photojournalism can be defined as using images to tell the news. While the picture press existed before the invention of photography, it relied on illustrations rather than photographs. Even after photography made it possible to capture images of reality, newspapers had to first translate them into a woodcut or metal plate in order to have a printable surface that could produce the images on the printed page. Readers were informed that these images were produced from photographs (rather than hand drawn) through captions. In the 1880s, the invention of a half-tone process, that turned an image into a series small dots that could be etched into the printing surface, made it possible to produce quality photographs, so that captions were no longer necessary. In 1893, a patent was issued for a faster method of making halftones, making the reproduction of photographs in news media even easier. In the 1840s, photographers reported on events like fires, military occupations, and surgery, documenting in the moment happenings for readers around the world. News photographs fed the public's insatiable demand for knowledge, leading to surges in sales of newspapers and magazines, which in turn drove demand for more photographs of current events--and led to more photojournalists entering the field. Matthew Brady, the nineteenth-century photographer who gained recognition during the American Civil War, was only one of an estimated 1500 war photographers taking pictures of the War's battles, soldiers, and hospitals. As cameras and printing processes improved, the number of photographs printed grew even larger. Today, people are quite accustomed to seeing the news in images, even videos.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Physician had been studying human motion in order to design better prosthetic legs for disabled Civil War soldiers. He studied Anthony's photographs closely and wrote about the process of doing so in a journal called The Atlantic Monthly, noting that the camera caught aspects of motion that were hidden to the human eye because they happened so quickly.
Early uses of photography
Remembering dead family members (children, husband, wife, etc) Recording Criminals Documenting Individuals Deemed Insane Celebrating the nude body
Instamatic
Shot the picture out of the camera so that it developed in front of the consumer's eyes
Lens focal length
Simple lenses focus light rays at a fixed point in space. The distance at which this happens is called their focal length. For example, a typical 50mm lens will focus light from a source located "infinitely" far away 50 millimeters from its optical center, a 6 inch view camera lens will focus at 6 inches, and so on. A lens with a longer focus will produce a larger image than a short one. Assuming that both are used on the same size of film, the larger image will fill more of the frame, and therefore will appear "closer". In general, lenses with a focus similar to the diagonal dimension of the frame for which they are used are considered "normal" - they produce images that correspond to renderings of reality in classic art, with relatively little apparent perspective distortion. Shorter focus lens are considered "wide angle", as the smaller images they make fit more of the scene into the frame than a "normal" lens. On the other end of the scale are long focus lenses, which make objects appear closer than normal. These are often referred to as telephoto lenses, though technically telephotos are lenses that have a shorter focal length on one side, to allow a lens to be physically shorter than its optical focal length. Not all long lenses are telephotos, even if most people refer to them that way. Since the 1980s, zoom lenses have been gaining in popularity, and currently they make up the bulk of all camera lenses on the market. These allow photographers to change the focal length of the lens by altering the relationship between the components of the lens, whether by rotating or pulling a control ring, or by pressing a physical or screen button. The quality of these lenses is now generally seen as on par with simple "prime" lenses, though earlier ones were usually optically inferior.
Street photography
Simply stated, street photography is candid photography on the street level It is a recording of everyday life in public places Street photography records a documentary of public life Street photographers capture real and unposed moment in life It is a genre of photography that is aimed at capturing candid shots of real life Henri Cartier-Bresson Walker Evans Garry Winogrand Eugène Atget Robert Frank William Klein Diane Arbus Weegee Lee Friedlander
Civil War Photography
The most famous of the estimated 1500 photographers documenting the Civil War, Brady used a wet collodion process that took only still pictures, without capturing motion. Working primarily in Union territory, Civil War photographers took pictures of battlefields, soldiers, hospitals, patients (i.e. wounded soldiers), prisons, prisoners, and the dead. They sold their photographs to the newspapers, to the War Department, and to participants in the war wishing to leave a record of themselves. The existing photographs of the Confederate war efforts are largely by a photographer named George S. Cook, who managed to continue photographing despite the limited amount of photographic supplies available in the South due to Union blockades.
Static subject matter
The subject matter for photographs in the beginning were mainly of buildings and still-life themes. The early photographers pointed their cameras at objects that were static (or non-moving) because the process of taking photographs took so long. Remember the photo called "View from the Window at Le Gras"? To get this exposure, the camera had to be pointed out the window for several hours. Daguerre and Talbot's process required less exposure time, but creating an image still required quite a lengthy exposure.
Camera controls
While photography doesn't have to involve the use of a camera (think of photograms, for example), that is how most photographs are made. The ability to control what a camera does with light is essential for a photographer to make reliable decisions. Fortunately, outside the bells and whistles of automation, most cameras modulate the quantity and quality of light they admit using only a few basic controls.
James Van Der Zee
a Black photographer working in Harlem, pushed beyond 1940 depictions of Black Americans that misrepresented them as victims of society or as comedic stereotypes.
Diane Arbus
a fashion photographer and a photojournalist who stirred up controversy with her photographs of former "freak" artists/circus performers. She also gained recognition for her documentary portraiture. You can see nine of her lesser-known images at this site. American photographer known for her hand-held black and white images of marginalized people...she is often criticized for objectifying her subjects
Controversy
a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion
Leland Stanford
a race horse owner, in 1873, to capture the trotting motions of his horse, Occident. Muybridge, who had invented a camera shutter in 1869, could take photographs at high speeds (or high speeds for that day and age). He set up a background of white sheets and had the horse trot in front of it. It took him three days to get a readable image of the horse in motion! But then, Muybridge had to interrupt his studies when he was accused of murder. After being acquitted of killing his wife's lover, he left the United States and didn't return to finish his motion study until 1877. He used stereoscopic wires fired by tripwires to establish that a horse can have all four feet off the ground simultaneously at a gallop.
Henry Fox Talbot
an Englishman named Henry Fox Talbot was working on another way of capturing light. Talbot was a scientist, inventor, and photographic innovator. He liked to sketch but was not very good at it. So, he tried his hand at using the camera obscura. Looking through the opening, he would try to draw what he saw in the box. He found this was neither easy nor did it produce a drawing that made him happy. His aim was to come up with a way that what he was seeing in the camera obscura could be captured permanently on a piece of paper without having to draw it. The process he came up with actually caught a negative of the image on a piece of glass. He would then take the glass and make positive images on paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals. The obvious difference between his process and that of Daguerre's is that Daguerre would produce a one-time print while Talbot's process could actually be used to produce many prints from the same "negative." Another difference is that Daguerre's process eliminated a step from the procedure. When he developed the final print that was it - he had a photograph. Talbot's method had the extra step of actually making exact copies, or prints.
Genre
genre refers to categorizing artwork by its style, subject matter, or form. The earliest photographers aimed their cameras at the world around them with the hopes of capturing an image. But soon, photographers began thinking of the types of photographs they were taking. While some shot a wide variety of photographs, others specialized. Ansel Adams, for instance, became widely recognized for his landscape photographs, while Matthew Brady was a portraitist who turned his attention to war photography at the outbreak of the American Civil War. Remember, the earliest photographers were limited by long exposure times and difficult photographic processes. Still, photographs from this era show an astonishing range of techniques and subjects.
Henry Fox Talbot
he tired of tracing images on his honeymoon and started experimenting with developing a paper that would be light sensitive and record the image automatically. This method of recording images is called the salted paper print. To make these prints, he treated paper with a sodium chloride solution and then applied a layer of silver nitrate. When these substances mixed together, they formed silver chloride and infused the paper. All he needed to do then to capture an image was to expose the paper to a light source. First, he soaked his paper in a weak mixture of sodium chloride (i.e. table salt) and water, then removed the paper from the water and let it dry. Then, in a dark room, he coated the that paper with silver nitrate (mixed in a 1:6 or 1:8 ratio) to make it photo (or light) sensitive. This paper would then be put in the camera obscura with a covering over the aperture. The camera would be put into the desired position and the cover over the aperture removed. After exposing the paper to light, the paper needed to be taken back to a dark room and treated with another salt solution so that it was no longer light sensitive. It was quite a bit of work to make what Talbot called his "photogenic drawings"! Still, it was easier (for him) than tracing the images by hand. Talbot's process had the advantage of creating a negative that could be used to print many identical images. The year that William Henry Fox Talbot developed the calotype, or the process he called Photogenic Drawing was 1841. His 1844 book, The Pencil of Nature, describes his invention and reproduces many of his early photos.
Margeret Bourke White
who worked as a photojournalist and an industrial photographer before becoming the first woman war correspondent photographer. This site contains information about her and over 60 images of her work.
Dorthea Lange
whose photographs of homeless people in the Great Depression and migrant works helped establish the genre of documentary photography
