Are You a Photography Expert?

Photography: An Overview

• Photography is the art of creating durable images by recording light either electronically or chemically.

• It is used in various fields such as science, manufacturing, business, art, film, and communication.

• A lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects to create a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure.

• With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file.

• With photographic emulsion, the result is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image.

• The word "photography" was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtós), genitive of φῶς (phōs), "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing".

• The camera obscura, which provides an image of a scene, dates back to ancient China.

• Nicéphore Niépce made the first permanent photoetching in 1822, and in 1826 he made the earliest surviving photograph from nature called "View from the Window at Le Gras".

• Louis Daguerre, in partnership with Niépce, worked out post-exposure processing methods that produced visually superior results and replaced bitumen with a more light-sensitive resin.

• William Fox Talbot created the calotype process, which used the chemical development of a latent image to greatly reduce the exposure needed and compete with the daguerreotype.

• The first flexible photographic roll film was marketed by Kodak in 1885, and the first transparent plastic roll film followed in 1889.

• Although modern photography is dominated by digital users, film continues to be used by enthusiasts and professional photographers.A Brief History of Photography

• Color photography was explored in the 1840s but required long exposures and could not "fix" the photograph to prevent color fading.

• The first permanent color photograph was taken in 1861 using the three-color-separation principle.

• Autochrome, the first commercially successful color process, was introduced by the Lumière brothers in 1907.

• Kodachrome, the first modern "integral tripack" color film, was introduced by Kodak in 1935.

• Digital photography dominates the 21st century, and more than 99% of photographs taken around the world are through digital cameras.

• The first digital camera to both record and save images in a digital format was the Fujix DS-1P created by Fujfilm in 1988.

• Digital imaging uses an electronic image sensor to record the image as a set of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film.

• Dualphotography consists of photographing a scene from both sides of a photographic device at once.

• Full-spectrum, ultraviolet, and infrared media have been used in photography since the 1960s.

• Layering is a photographic composition technique that manipulates the foreground, subject or middle-ground, and background layers.

• Light field photography allows focusing at various depths of field to be selected after the photograph has been captured.

• Amateur, commercial, and fine art photography are the three main types of photography.Photography: Its Evolution and Implications

• Early photographers were met with acclaim, but some questioned if their work met the definitions and purposes of art.

• Clive Bell in his classic essay “Art” states that only “significant form” can distinguish art from what is not art.

• Sotheby's London sold the 2001 photograph 99 Cent II Diptychon for an unprecedented $3,346,456 to an anonymous bidder in 2007, making it the most expensive at the time.

• Conceptual photography turns a concept or idea into a photograph.

• Photojournalism is a particular form of photography that employs images to tell a news story and must comply with a rigid ethical framework.

• The camera has a long and distinguished history as a means of recording scientific phenomena from the first use by Daguerre and Fox-Talbot.

• Wildlife photography requires a photographer to choose the right place and right time when specific wildlife are present and active.

• Susan Sontag dismisses the objectivity of photography, arguing that it is a subjective form of representation.

• Digital imaging has raised ethical concerns because of the ease of manipulating digital photographs in post-processing.

• Photography is one of the new media forms that changes perception and changes the structure of society.

• Photography is both restricted and protected by the law in many jurisdictions.

• Each country has different laws regarding photography.