History of Photography

Photography is the art of producing image of objects on a photosensitive surface. Photography has not only touched our lives in many ways from documenting our special moments like weddings, birthdays, vacations it also extends into art. Sir John Herschel came up with the word Photography which is derived from the Greek word photo (light) and graphein (to draw). Joseph Nicéphore Niépce developed the first permanent image and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre a fellow Frenchman formed a partnership with Niepce to further develop the process.

Daguerre after several years of work on the process invented the Daguerreotype which was the first process of photography. Even though the daguerreotype gained popularity and was the first kind of photography to be used commonly it has its own set of problems like the exposure time was unpredictable and only one copy of an image could be made. The Pinhole camera or the Camera Obscura was the first camera used in photography. The basic concept of the Camera Obscura was a closed chamber or a box with a small hole on one side and this created an image on the opposite side of the box due to rectilinear propagation of light. The camera did not have a lens and further improvements were made to it when Johannes Kepler suggested the usage of a lens. The Calotype was invented by Henry Talbot in response to the daguerreotype, he produced a paper negative and even though the prints were poor in quality compared to the daguerreotype the advantage was that many prints could be created.

There were constant developments in the field of photography from its initial beginnings, Photography has come a long way from its initial crude form to new developments today; technological advancements have made it possible to have prints available from a few minutes to a few hours.