2. What is ‘photography’
• Photography is derived from the Greek words photos (light) and
graphos (drawing). It is the art, science, and practice of creating
lasting images by recording light.
• Today we use mobile phones and digital cameras to create
photographs but this wasn’t always the case...
3. HOW was the camera invented?
•
The camera was a technological development that started first with the discovery
of a technological device called the camera obscura. This technology first created
an image of a scene that dates back to ancient China!
•
The camera obscura literally means “dark chamber” in Latin. It is a box with a hole
in it which allows light to go through and create an image onto the piece of paper.
A camera obscura receives images just like the
human eye—through a small opening and upside
down. Our brain turns the images the right way
up. In a camera, a mirror is used.
4. Leonardo da Vinci
mentions natural
cameras obscura that
are formed by dark
caves on the edge of a
sunlit valley.
Photographer Abelardo Morell’s
camera obscura turns darkened
rooms into magical landscapes
(Printed in National Geographic
Magazine)
Central Park, New York City
A hole in the cave wall
will act as a pinhole
camera and project an
upside down image on
a piece of paper.
So the birth of
photography was
primarily concerned
with developing a
means to fix (make
permanent) and retain
(keep) the image
produced by the
camera obscura.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/05/camera-obscura/camera-obscura-video
5. How to make a camera obscura
http://www.howcast.com/videos/387145-How-to-Transform-a-Room-into-a-Camera-Obscura
6. History of
Photography
• Read Chapter 10
of your textbook
• Summarise brief
notes on the
history of
photography in a
one page
worksheet, add this
to your folio.
Joseph Niépce in the window of his upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras, he set up a camera obscura, placed within it a polished plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum, an compound dating back to the time of the Egyptians This material has the unusual property of hardening in light not blackening like silver salts but its light sensitivity is small ) and uncapped the lens. After at least a day-long exposure of eight hours, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was the permanent direct positive picture of " a view from nature. "
