Creative Media Year 1 Photography Assignment - Capture
Photography is a very popular medium where still or moving images are captured using a clever device - a camera. Photography is used for many things, be it for art, money, or to capture a moment that you can remember forever.
Photography dates way back to the 5th Century B.C.E. All though the first photographs were taken long after this time, huge technical discoveries were made by the likes of Mo Ti or Ibn al-Haytham, that will never disappear from the history of the ever-growing art-form.
Success of taking the first permanent photograph was achieved in 1822, by a French inventor called Nicephore Niepce. He tried finding ways of exposing photographs in a shorter amount of time, but died before he made any significant discovery. However, Louis Daguerre, an artist and chemist who he worked in conjunction with, developed the Daguerreotype in 1837, which was the next critical mark in the history of photography. Other methods and processes of making photographs appeared shortly after the Daguerreotype and it was later in the same century that saw the development from these processes to the technology of film invented by George Eastman, the founder of Kodak. This advancement in technology is still in the latter part of the history of photography and is also what influenced the technology used by film cameras today.
I will now show you how advance photography has become over the years, by deconstructing an image by both my chosen past and contemporary photographers, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Rankin.
The first image I will deconstruct is one of Erwin’s most famous photographs. The picture is of a lady standing on the iconic eiffel tower in Paris, France. The reason I picked this photo, is for the simple reason that it shows clear differences from photographs long ago compared to the photos the likes of Rankin take today, but it also has some similarities involved that make it just as interesting as the pictures contemporary photographers capture.
Because technology was not yet advanced enough to allow photographers to add the effects to their work that they can today, the likes of Erwin did not have as many ways of expressing the meaning of the photograph he probably would have hoped. Instead, photographers 50 or more years ago would have had to improvise what they did have, to make their work as effective as they could achieve. In Erwin’s case, he used location to make his work eye-catching in this photo, which is what fashion photographers such as himself and Rankin want to accomplish. As you can see, standing on the Eiffel tower is quite a daring stunt to do for just a photograph, but this is exactly what makes it so eye-catching. Fashion photography has widely been known over time to use many aesthetics such as exotic locations to have great effects on its work, and regardless of what technologies are out there today, I still believe it would be hard to top a fashion photograph like this.
The second image I will deconstruct is by one of the top photographers out there today, Rankin. This photograph is from the wide selection of fashion photographs he has developed over his career The reason I chose this photograph is because in many ways, and so many more, this photograph could be stared at just as long as Erwin’s picture in Paris, however not for the same reasons.
It only takes a few seconds to pick out what exactly there is different to the photograph by Erwin. Because of the technological leaps since Erwin’s photography career, photographers of today now have so many options other than just the location, to make their photo look beautiful. Rankin chose to make his set black and white, not because he had to, like Erwin did, but to make the dress stand out as much as possible. This effect is very simple, but works brilliantly because your eyes immediately get drawn to the streak of yellow that could so easily have been altered with some of the technology Erwin did not have accompanying him.
I have found the techniques used by Rankin to be more than just interesting and inspiring. For me, his work, and work that is similar to his, changes my whole understanding of photography. No more do I think that photography is just about taking photos of something attractive, I perceive the art-form to be so much more than that now. Through photography like his, you really start to understand why people can get a great thrill from capturing the essence of a moment with a camera. I also find work like his more than just interesting and inspiring because of the fact that the most part of a picture created by photographers like Rankin is developed not just by a digital device, but by many other things too. Just by using effects or techniques, the trickery of the camera and programs like Photoshop that can give desired changes that a camera is not yet advanced enough to give, pictures can really look spectacular at their best. That’s why I believe Rankin to be such an influence on me and others interested in this enjoyable part of the multimedia, because as far as I’m concerned, he is the best at what he does.
Timeline of History of Photography:
1822 – Nicéphore Niépce takes the first permanent photograph, of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, using a non-lens contact-printing "heliographic process", but it was destroyed later; the earliest surviving example is from 1825.[1]
1826 – Nicéphore Niépce takes the first permanent photograph from nature,[1] a landscape that required an eight hour exposure.
1835 – William Fox Talbot creates his own photography process.
1839 – Louis Daguerre patents the daguerreotype.
1839 – William Fox Talbot invented the positive / negative process widely used in modern photography. He refers to this as photogenic drawing.
1839 – John Herschel demonstrates hyposulfite of soda (also known as hypo, or sodium thiosulfate) as a fixer, and makes the first glass negative.
1851 – Introduction of the collodion process by Frederick Scott Archer.
1854 – André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri credited with introduction of the carte de visite (French "visiting card"). Disdéri introduced a rotating camera which could reproduce eight individually exposed images on a single negative. After printing on albumen paper, the images were cut apart and glued to calling card-sized mounts. These tiny portraits were left by visiting friends, which inspired the name carte de visite.
1861 – The first color photograph, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, is shown by James Clerk Maxwell.
1868 – Louis Ducos du Hauron patents a method of subtractive color photography.
1871 – The gelatin emulsion is invented by Richard Maddox.
1876 – F. Hurter & V. C. Driffield begin systematic evaluation of sensitivity characteristics of photographic emulsions – science of sensitometry.
1878 – Eadweard Muybridge made a high-speed photographic demonstration of a moving horse, airborne during a trot, using a trip-wire system.
1887 – Celluloid film base introduced.
1888 – Kodak n°1 box camera is mass marketed; first easy-to-use camera.
1887 – Gabriel Lippmann invents a "method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference".
1891 – Thomas Edison patents the "kinetoscopic camera" (motion pictures).
1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumière – Invented the cinématographe.
1898 – Kodak introduced their Folding Pocket Kodak.
1900 – Kodak introduced their first Brownie.
1901 – Kodak introduced the 120 film.
1902 – Arthur Korn devises practical phototelegraphy technology (reduction of photographic images to signals that can be transmitted by wire to other locations); Wire-Photos in wide use in Europe by 1910, and transmitted intercontinentally by 1922.
1907 – The Autochrome Lumière is the first color photography process marketed.
1912 – Vest Pocket Kodak using 127 film.
1913 – Kinemacolor, the first commercial "natural color" system for movies is invented.
1914 – Kodak introduced the Autographic film system.
1920s – Yasujiro Niwa invented a device for phototelegraphic transmission through cable and later via radio.
1923 – Doc Harold Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp and strobe photography.
1925 – The Leica introduced the 35mm format to still photography.
1932 – The first full-color Technicolor movie, Flowers and Trees, is made by Disney.
1934 – The 135 film cartridge was introduced, making 35mm easy to use.
1936 – Introduction by IHAGEE of the Ihagee Kine Exakta 1, the first 35mm. Single Lens reflex camera.
1936 – Development of Kodachrome multi-layered reversal color film.
1937 – Agfacolor-Neu reversal color film.
1939 – Agfacolor negative-positive color material, the first modern "print" film.
1939 – The View-Master stereo viewer is introduced.
1942 – Kodacolor, Kodak's first "print" film.
1947 – Dennis Gabor invents holography.
1947 – Edgerton develops the Rapatronic camera for the U.S. government.
1948 – The Hasselblad camera was introduced.
1948 – Edwin H. Land introduces the first Polaroid instant image camera.
1952 – The 3-D film craze begins.
1954 – Leica M Introduced
1957 – First Asahi Pentax SLR introduced.
1957 – First digital image produced on a computer by Russell Kirsch at U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST).
1959 – Nikon F introduced.
1959 – AGFA introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.
1963 – Kodak introduces the Instamatic.
1964 – First Pentax Spotmatic SLR introduced.
1973 – Fairchild Semiconductor releases the first large image forming CCD chip; 100 rows and 100 columns.
1975 – Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors.
1986 – Kodak scientists invent the world's first megapixel sensor.
2005 – AgfaPhoto files for bankruptcy. Production of Agfa brand consumer films ends.
2006 – Dalsa produces 111 megapixel CCD sensor, the highest resolution at its time.
2008 – Polaroid announces it is discontinuing the production of all instant film products, citing the rise of digital imaging technology.
2009 - Kodak announces the discontinuance of Kodachrome film.
