Chapter 2: What is Photography? past and present
Photography
- The word “photography” comes from a French word, “photographie”, which based on Greek words: phos (“light”), graphê (“representation by means of lines” or “drawing”), together it means “drawing with light”
- Process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as film or electronic sensor.
- Photography has many uses for both business and pleasure.
- Photography can also be viewed as a commercial and artistic endeavor.
History of Photography
- Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) invented the camera obscura, the “first camera”
- Camera obscura: The principle of the camera obscura can be demonstrated with a rudimentary type, just a box (which may be room-size) with a hole in one side, (see pinhole camera for construction details). Light from only one part of a scene will pass through the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall. The projection is made on paper on which an artist can then copy the image.
- Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) discovered silver nitrate
- Georges Fabricius (1516–1571) discovered silver chloride
- Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694.
- Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what can be interpreted as photography.
- All photography was originally monochrome, or black-and-white. Even after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to dominate for decades, due to its lower cost and its "classic" photographic look.
- Color photography was explored beginning in the mid 1800s. Early experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. The first permanent color photo was taken in 1861 by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
- Most modern color films, except Kodachrome (American Kodak), are based on the Agfacolor Neue technology - German Agfa. Instant color film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.
Commercial photography
- The market for photographic services demonstrates the aphorism "one picture is worth a thousand words."
- Magazines and newspapers, companies putting up Web sites, advertising agencies and other groups pay for photography.
- Photographs are made to be paid.
b. Based on a budget
- Once the pictures are sold to any company, the company owns the right of property.
Types of commercial photography:
1. Advertising photography
==> Photographs made to illustrate and usually sell a service or product. These images are generally done with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.
2. Fashion and Glamour photography
==> This type of photography usually incorporates models. Fashion photography emphasizes the clothes or product; glamour emphasizes the model. Glamour photography is popular in advertising and in men's magazines. Models in glamour photography may be nude, but this is not always the case.
3. Crime Scene Photography
==> This type of photography consists of photographing scenes of crime such as robberies and murders. A black and white camera or an infrared camera may be used to capture specific details.
4. Still life photography
==> depicts inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made.
5. Food photography
==> can be used for editorial, packaging or advertising use. Food photography is similar to still life photography, but requires some special skills.
6. Photojournalism
==> Photographs made in this context are accepted as a documentation of a news story. It can be considered a subset of editorial photography.
7. Portrait and wedding photography
==> Photographs that are made and sold directly to the end user of the images
8. Fine art photography
==> Photographs that are made to fulfill a vision, and reproduced to sell directly to the customer.
9. Landscape photography
==> photographs of different locations made to be sold to tourists as postcards
10. Wildlife photography
==> demonstrates life of the animals, “National Geography”
11. Pornography/Erotic photography
==> explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, especially with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer.
Non-commercial Photography/Art Photography
- Fine art photography and documentary photography became accepted by the English-speaking art world and the gallery system during the twentieth century
- Made to be appreciated as an art.
- Exhibits in gallery.
- People would buy it simply because they like it.
- fine art photographers tried to imitate painting styles.
- After the wide use of photography editing software, Photoshop, many photographers and artist begin to challenge the borderline between digital art, montage, graphic designs and phototypography, and most the time, the work they produced are rather confusing and difficult to distinguish.
Traditional Camera
- It captures light onto photographic film or photographic plate that is sensitive to light.
- Films: a sheet of plastic (polyester, nitriocellulose, or cellulose acetate) coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film. When the emulsion is sufficiently exposed to light, it forms images. Chemical processes can then be applied to the film to create a visible image, in a process called film developing.
- film has better resolution, yet, it is not easy to control its result.
- Film and film processing is costly.
- unprofessional handling in dark room could result bad image quality.
- Photographers can manipulate or experiment with their photographs during the film processing.
- It is risky during shooting. Photographer can only use his or her experience to determine the outcome of the picture
Digital still camera
- It is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images on a This is measured by how many picture cells (pixels) make up the photo, usually counted in the millions and hence called "megapixels".
- Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photographs. In the Western market, digital cameras outsell their 35 mm film counterparts.
- Digital cameras can include features that are not found in film cameras, such as displaying an image on the camera's screen immediately after it is recorded, the capacity to take thousands of images on a single small memory device, the ability to record video with sound, the ability to edit images, and deletion of images allowing re-use of the storage they occupied.
- Digital cameras are incorporated into many devices ranging from PDAs and mobile phones (called camera phones) to vehicles. The Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical devices are essentially specialized digital cameras.
- Resolution of an image can be adjusted to higher or lower quality in the camera setting.
Types of camera
Manual Camera (SLR, single-lens reflex)
• Manual adjustment
• complex but flexible
• Can achieve desirable images
• Exchangeable lens
• expensive
Compact Camera
• Preset shooting modes
• Not flexible
• Difficult to achieve desired imagery
• very user friendly
• Lens is fixed
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