What
Is Photography?
Photography is the art
of capturing light with a camera, usually via a digital sensor or film, to
create an image. With the right camera equipment, you can even photograph
wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye, including UV, infrared, and
radio.
The first permanent
photograph was captured in 1826 (some sources say 1827) by
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in France. It shows the roof of a building
lit by the sun. You can see it reproduced below:
A Brief History of
Photography and the People Who Made It Succeed
Color photography started to become popular and accessible with
the release of Eastman Kodak’s “Kodachrome” film in the 1930s. Before that,
almost all photos were monochromatic – although a handful of photographers,
toeing the line between chemists and alchemists, had been using specialized
techniques to capture color images for decades before. You’ll find
some fascinating galleries of photos from
the 1800s or early 1900s captured in full color, worth exploring if you have
not seen them already.
These scientist-magicians, the first color photographers, are
hardly alone in pushing the boundaries of one of the world’s newest art forms.
The history of photography has always been a history of people – artists and
inventors who steered the field into the modern era.
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