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10,000 BCE
Description
The job duties of photographers include using photo-enhancing software, marketing or advertising services in order to attract clients, using different photographic techniques and lighting equipment, and capturing subjects in professional quality photographs. Some important tools/techniques include a tripod, a camera bag, a camera (of course), photo editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop, and filters. -
500 BCE
Camera Obscura
A while before the first camera, there was the camera obscura, which was basically just a dark room with a tiny pinhole, and it projected a blurry picture of the outside world on a wall. Astronomers used to use this to protect their eyes while seeing the sun and solar eclipses, and artists used it to aid them in creating landscapes. -
Photochemistry
In 1725, Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver salts darkened when exposed to light. He then experimented with letters and found that the sun's rays wrote the words well on the chalk sediment. -
Photochemistry part 2
In 1827, Joseph Nicepore Niepce used a camera obscura and a pewter plate coated with Bitumen of Judea to capture an image. His 8 hour long exposure of his courtyard is called the first photograph. -
Daguerreotype
In 1837, Daguerre discovered that exposing iodized silver plates to light left behind a faint image that could be developed using mercury fumes. This new technique, called Daguerreotype, not only produced a sharper and more refined picture, but it also cut the exposure time down from several hours to around 10 or 20 minutes. -
Calotype
This method traded the Daguerreotype’s metal plates for sheets of high-quality photosensitive paper. When exposed to light, the paper produced a latent image that could be developed and preserved by rinsing it with hyposulphite. The results were slightly fuzzier than Daguerreotypes, but they offered one key advantage: ease of reproduction. The Calotype allowed photographers to produce endless copies of a picture from a single negative. This process will become a basic principle of photography. -
Wet Collodion Process
Frederick Scott Archer created a new method that had both crisp image quality and negatives that could be easily copied, using a chemical called collodion. This chemical was effective as a means for coating light sensitive solutions onto glass plates. While these “wet plates” reduced exposure times to only a few seconds, using them took a lot of work. -
Dry Plates
Robert L. Maddox and others made a new type of photographic plate that preserved silver salts in gelatin. Since they retained light sensitivity for long periods of time, they could be prepackaged and mass produced. They also offered quicker exposures, so people could capture moving objects -
Flexible Roll Film
Photography didn't really become accessible to amateurs until George Eastman started producing film on rolls. Film was more resilient than clunky glass plates, and the use of these rolls allowed photographers to take multiple pictures in quick succession. He used this film in his first Kodak camera, which customers could use then send to the manufacturer to have their pictures developed. This was the standard means of photography for almost a century until the development of digital cameras. -
Autochrome
In 1907, French brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere started marketing an additive color process they called "autochrome." They found the key to their invention in the potato. They added tiny grains of potato starch to a panchromatic emulsion, and this produced vivid images that outdid all past attempts of color photography. This would remain the most popular color photography method until 1935, where Eastman's Kodak company creates Kodachrome. -
The digital age
In the first decade of the 21st century, the digital age of photography began. Digital cameras, filters, and online photo editing software were all created in this "revolution." Most of the cameras we have today are digital, from the ones in our phones to Canon or Nikon cameras. This age completely revolutionized photography, now we can take photos and see and store them completely digitally without having to print them out. In the digital age, photos are more high quality than ever before.
