THE SHUTTERBUGS - PART 1

How does it feel to look yourself through a camera and in someone else’s eyes? It is undeniably an incomprehensible feeling to know how you look from another person’s frame.  It does not just involve taking equipment and capturing innumerable things around. The person capturing possesses a style, a fixture, a content and most eminently an impetus as well as a story behind it which makes it enthralling to the viewers. A picture is worth than a million words says a generation. We require and depend on pictures to convey subtly that your life is like a visual story amid the reality. Just like the subject has its own story, so does the invention that sets up a revolution.

Photography refers to an art or practice of capturing and distilling the photographs and a photographer is the one who exercises it. A photograph is not just a replication of the view but also served as a purpose of history in ancient times and is so until now. It takes you to the moment it was captured which is why we tend to associate emotionally with it while viewing. The evidences or the so called photographs were of significance as they serve as tools to indoctrinate the future generation to know how something looked or how someone was that triggers a viewer to trace the root.

The ancient photographers have instigated through the pictures captured during those times to trace our history, culture, resources and our practices. To capture something, we require a component called the camera. But can you believe that the first photographic image was not made of the usage of the component? Yes, Fox Talbot who is a British inventor propounded by capturing an image without using a camera and by placing objects onto paper brushed with light-sensitive silver chloride, which he then exposed to sunlight. Can you believe that a chemical compound which helped with the glazing of substances and was used as an antidote for mercury poisoning was behind the first photographic image? It is to be noted that the three chemical compounds used in photography were Silver Chloride, Silver Bromide (AgBr), and Silver Iodide (AgI). But do you wonder why this specific component was used for capturing images? The reason being the light sensitivity of the silver halides during the photographic process. Few fragments of these crystals if exposed to light will trigger a chemical reaction which in turn darkens the film to produce an image. The image seen can be developed to produce a “negative”. Before even the development of photography was found other mediums for capturing pictures like Camera obscura, from which the modern-day cameras evolved. It was then followed by other photographic technologies like daguerreotypes (introduced by Louie Jacques Mande Daguerre in the year 1839), dry plates (developed by Richard L Maddow in the year 1871), and films.

Earlier, the pictures as well as the photographers laid their focus over the light that fell on the objects that they wish to capture. These concepts of lights were of utmost importance to them that served the beauty of the pictures and also mark the accuracy which demanded the knowledge of electromagnetic properties and spectrum of physics and quantum theory. As the invention dates back to centuries so does the size of the equipment which was a room-sized one and also went short of the preservation of the captured images instead involved tracings of the same.

Although the first small and portable camera was invented by Johann Zahn in the year 1685, who was the German author of the seventeenth century’s book “Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium” and is considered to be the most prolific writer and illustrator of Camera Obscura. Despite their inventions served the purpose of capturing pictures it failed to let out the pictures to vanish and not stay permanently. Hence, the first permanent photograph of a camera image was made by Joseph Nicephore Niepse who utilized box camera made of wood that used to slide and was made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris. He with Daguerre was involved in a partnership in the Heliographic process and succeeded in showing the view from his window. Before Niepse died, he even invented methods to improve contrast in his heliographs with other chemicals.

Hence it is astonishing to know that photography these days seems to be a piece of cake with utmost perfection that involved immense vigor and dedication from ancient times to whom we have to be grateful for their invention to which we are struck in awe every time we see something captured. The photographers nowadays make use of the formulas to bring their pictures captured to be eye candy using so many editing apps. This wonderful invention does not just end here and so does this part of the blog.

 

Until next time,

The awestruck female.