STEVE. Task 1 & 9. Painting 2 photography assignment.

(Henry Fox Talbot, dandelion seeds 1850.)

The word "photography" means "light" and "to draw or to write"

Scientists were fascinated by the physics rule that light can only travel in straight lines. When the first person to ever make an image through light by creating a "camera obscura" by fully blacking out a room but leaving a small hole of light- because light can only travel in a straight line unless theres an obstruction(water, which would make light "bend") it meant that the light coming through the hole into the room produced an reflection on the other side of the room of the scene outside, of course the image would be upside down and this is what scientists wanted to explore further; find ways to turn the images the right way up and learn how to capture the image forever and make multiples of that one image.

The first two photographers that found out a way to do this are Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre who thought of ways at round about the same time. Talbot created negative images first by using paper soaked in silver chloride and then fixed with a salt solution, then he turned the negatives into positives by contact printing onto a another sheet of paper he called this "Calotype" Where as Daguerre's way he was only possible to create one copy of the image only and he did this by using silver-plated copper coated with silver iodide and then developed with warmed mercury and his named this a "Daguerreotype" but because Talbot found a way to make two versions of the image his version stuck.

Talbot: The first photo-negative ever made(1835);

The negative turned into a positive.

Salted paper print from a calotype by Talbot.

Joseph Niepce discovered the first ever successful form of photography "Heliographic" and was the first to take the first photogravure etching in 1822. Niepce could not draw from the images of a camera obsura so he seeked out to find a way to capture the image permanently he experimented with "Lithography" which is a method of printing images using a stone or a metal plate which led him to attempt take a photograph with the camera obscura, he also experimented with silver chloride but found it darkens when exposed to light. Eventually he used Bitumen for his first successful attempt at capturing nature photographically. He dissolved bitumen in lavender oil and coated the sheet of pweter with this light capturing mixture, he placed the sheet inside a camera obscura for eight hours and later removed it and washed it with lander oi to remove the unexposed bitumen.

He started to collaborte with Louis Daguerre in 1829 and together they developed The "Physautotype" which was invented in 1832 where the images were produced with lavender dissolved in alcohol this solution was then applied to a silver plate and exposed in a camera obscura for several hours to create the image after Niepce's death Daguerre went on to improve their process and called it the "Daguerreotype"

At the early stages of photography only scientist and wealthy people were able to experiment with photography as the photographer's had to create everything by hand and develop the images too; they had to be very smart to figure it out and very rich to get all the "supplies" to do it.

The other early practitioners for example Nadar, was the first person to take Ariel photographs and the first to apply/use artificial lighting in photography, Julia Cameron developed soft focus and so on so forth- more photographers were discovering new aspects and ways to photograph and changing the way people photographed as the years went on.

Photography gave art a more challenging role- at first art was used to capture time, but as the camera now did this, artist had to find different ways to create art; they had to not capture time but created a unique versions of it, create worlds and people and scenes with their minds that the camera could not create. It gave painters a hard time as “portraiture” was more accurately captured by camera but then painters found they could create portraits in abstract ways, showing off the hidden personally behind the people in the portrait which is something the camera could not as easily achieve. Artists started to paint/draw from photographs.

Photography is seen to some as more of a mechanics then an art form, to other it’s considered more complex as in most cases you can’t alter the contents of the photo, the photographer has to look out for composition, lighting and of course a subject matter which makes the photo. In other cases the photographers could set up the scene in the photo, move objects/people around then re-take the shot, they can take the images in different lighting changing the tone of the photo, they could also change the angle and the perception of the photo.

Because photography opened so many new doors for artists as well as making it more of a challenge they started to incorporate more of the senses within their work, they'd aim to create texture and create a sense of "taste" with their work and also eventually grew the cross over between photography and art that people would blend together making creations that they wouldn't have ever dreamed possible before and as time went on technology improved and created a lot better equipment that meant people could do photography easier and more seriously because it became so popular, companies began inventing different lenses and accessories that meant photographers could take their work further and as more people began getting into photography other photographers had to step up their skills to make an impact and keep creating new ideas- soon photography gained rules(for media purposes) and their was certain does and don'ts about it and certain tricks you could do to create different effects. Technology also made photography an everyday thing, people who didn't even consider them selves photographers or people who knew nothing about it could take photos by the simple press of a shutter button- people are used to cameras being everywhere nowadays, in some countries like New York photographers can walk around with a camera, flashing it in peoples faces without consent and its not a problem, unfortunately it's not like this everywhere and it would be a problem, the down fall of photography and cameras being around so much is that their are now a lot of camera shy people when along time ago having your photo taken was a treat and very very rare.