Photography

Missing Images

Photography wasn’t considered a form of art in the United States until the turn of the century when a man named Alfred Steiglitz fought throughout his lifetime to make sure we recognized it as an art form. It was only used as a form of science up until then. There is a lot of chemistry when it comes to photography; mixing different chemicals for film and paper as well as the four or five different “baths” for each the film and paper. And to know what film to use, which paper and what chemicals will form the best possible images. This is why most people pay to get their film developed. Photography is really complex due to the different kinds of sciences, art and imagination involved.

We’ve already mentioned the chemistry, and very briefly the art of photography; now we will explore some of the physics of photography. Light rays, lenses, mirrors and prisms are a few examples of physical forms of photography. On the next page are three images to help understand the significance of the cameras lens, and the complexity of controlling the light waves.

The first image is of a man smoking a tobacco pipe in front of an exposed sheet of film. Shown are two focal points of light rays bouncing in all directions. Instead of producing an image onto the film, the rays will just completely expose the film.

The second image is of the same man, but in the middle of him and the sheet of film is a convex lens. What the convex lens does differently is redirect the light path from one single point onto corresponding point on the film.

The third image is an example of why we use convex lenses instead of other lenses. The first lens in the picture hit the lens straightforward, not refracting. The second lens is similar but at an angle so some rays are refracted but the rays are not affected and continue to go straight.