In around 2 years, it will be the 200th anniversary of what is thought to be the first photograph produced. When I say photograph, it was completely unlike the way that we take photographs today.
The first photograph was thought to be by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce a Frenchman, who developed Heliography, a process to create images using sunlight, and bitumen as the medium.
His process produced a photo called View from the window Le_Gras
Which was taken in 1826 or 1827. The bitumen he used – unlike what’s under your car tyres, became hard when exposed to light, especially bright sources. The sun. The drawback was that it could take many hours or even days to capture an image.
Nicéphore Niépce coated many types of metal and glass plates with the bitumen, during his experimentation he discovered that it was possible to ‘fix’ an image onto these plates, and that image showed a view of real life. This was considered to be almost magic, as for hundreds of years the only method making an image was to get a painter to produce a flattering representation in oil paint, something only the wealthy could afford. For a while, photography was also the pastime of the rich. However technical improvements in the equipment brought this as a hobby to the masses, but it took time.
Fast forward 200 years, we all can produce images that the likes of Joseph would consider witchcraft.
The rise of the smartphone with photographic capability has made reporters and film makers of us all. Visit any holiday destination or mundane street corner and you’ll see people, arm outstretched, selfies are increasingly popular. Clicking away ten to the dozen. Mobile phone quality has come on leaps and bounds, both still and video images result in excellent quality. Websites, Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram and Blogs abound with output from mobiles.
Tech companies vie for the cleverest tools to enhance your video and photo production. Your mobile will straighten wonky shots, alter colour balance, sharpen blur, remove unwanted backgrounds or even people. You can cut out the subjects in an image and paste them into other images, effectively creating things that could not actually be.
Despite the ease of this, we read about many a selfie snapper who had the misfortune to step too far back to get that perfect last (Ever!) shot.
One of the latest App offerings comes from Adobe, a company famed for their Photoshop image processing software. Photoshop Apps are now are available on Tablets, with cropped versions for your mobile phone as well.
Adobes latest offering is called Indigo, currently available for iPhone only, though later versions will be Android compatible.
Project Indigo
Adobe Project Indigo This is a free App to download from the Apple App store. Adobe say they have produced Indigo to provide a more natural look to mobile images, Such as what an DSLR might produce. A proper camera!!!
Joking aside, photography has come a very long way in 200 years.
Younger Photographers have grown up with Mobiles, so are happy using them, other photographers used film cameras to start with, then moved onto DSLR cameras where the image is stored, like a mobile, on magnetic media. The ease in which images and video can be sent worldwide in an instant, can easily be taken for granted.
Those who remember film photography knew that you could take 12, 24, or 36 photographs and that was it. Rewind the film cassette, take it to the chemist, or pop it into an envelope and post to a developer. After several days wait, if you were lucky, an envelope arrived with your precious prints. All as taken by the camera, wonky, out of focus, under exposed, over exposed, that is what you got.
Fast forward to digital, you can take hundreds, or thousands of pictures, (This author has taken 1000 in the last 7 days on a tour, most headed for the Recycle bin!) delete the ones you don’t like, or run them through an editor and bingo, you have a perfect image that can be shown to friends anywhere, worldwide, or even printed as a hard copy on a home printer.
Melbourne Photographic Society members are happy using all types of cameras to make that perfect image. Visitors are welcome, and we have a great range of speakers and events featuring all types of photo capture devices.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Nicéphore Niépce”, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 4.0.