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the birth of photography
history of photography and photojournalism
the history of photography essay
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When I was a little boy, I would always want to be in pictures. I look back at my pictures and think, why is it over time i do not like being in pictures? Now I am interested in taking the pictures. i want to learn all concepts of photography. i hope to learn how to take better pictures as i learn about capturing photographs from different angles in life one moment at a time.
Photography is a greek word meaning “to draw light.” Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839 thought of recording images by action of light but was not the inventor of photography. The first photograph was taken by Jose Nicephore with an obscura camera, letting the light from the sun draw the picture capturing a moment in time. Now, we have printed pictures on paper which is the practical process of photography invented by Louis Daquerre. Showing movement and still life in modern days came as far back into painting and drawing (Freeman).
Black and white digital photography by Sara Heinrichs (Heinrichs).
In digital photography, there are black and white, aerial, negative, sepia, etc. images. Black and white is more commonly known as fine-art and traditional photography. Duotone, Split Tone, and Sepia Tone are three tones which create original or traditional black and white. Aerial is the best created for maps and scale drawings of landforms. These are mostly used in the Federal Government and Armed Forces. A chemical called a developer changes the chemicals on the film and creates a negative - so named because it displays colors that are the opposite of those actually making up the photograph (Rosa). Distortions effects help enhance photos and the use of hidden displacement maps. Digital panoramas also knows as digital stitching software is very simple. in fact, think of it as a quilt or blanket stitched by grandmothers. You take two, three, four, wtc. pictures and you can combine them into one giant picture.
This was once four individual pictures of the irish countryside, now combined into one huge digital panorama (Schneider).
A way that some famous photographers display their work is through picture magazines. Which photo journalists edit and critique within the different magazines. Photo journalists present a story primarily through the use of photographs. Each magazine has many different journalists who love to tell stories through photographs throughout the magazine.
The role of the news-making photographer in Gardner’s era was to document the history that was in the making, documenting the battlefield and anyone that would be considered a pioneer of the news. They also had a role to make large photographic prints. Today, photojournalist’s play the role of being a visual story teller. They have to photograph, edit and present the images they shot to tell a story that no one else can tell. They have to be knowledgeable about the trade and have to be able to use all the tools provided really well. The time from Gardner’s era and today technology has changed and the equipment has advanced so far that more advancement is continued to be used to the fullest. The only thing that I have really seen be the same is the way photojournalist photograph their subjects. Some photojournalist even still use the darkroom to produce their images and that has been around for ages.
Practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training from the earliest days of taking photos, the first photographers were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a trade, a science, an art, or an entertainment, and who often were unaware of each other’s work. Exactly as it sounds photography means photo-graphing. The word photography comes from two Greek words, photo, or “light”, and graphos, or drawing and from the start of photography; the history of the aforementioned has been debated. The idea of taking pictures started some thirty-one thousand years ago when strikingly sophisticated images of bears, rhinoceroses, bison, horses and many other types of creators were painted on the walls of caves found in southern France. Former director of photography at New Yorks museum of modern art says that “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming, with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones, and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes along uninterrupted.” ˡ
As I skim through American Photo, I finally come to an article on "The 25 Most Important Photographers Now." There's a nice introduction on the first page, about what this article is about, and on the bottom-left corner it starts with the first photographer in the list, Gilles Bensimon. The article has a nice layout, including a picture by each photographer and their name headlined above or below, and each photographer also has a good-sized paragraph about himself or herself.
First, let us define Photojournalism and Fine Art Photography. According to the Oxford dictionary, photojournalism is the art or practice of communicating news by photographs, especially in magazines. But according to Merriam-Webster, photojournalism’s full definition is journalism in which written copy is subordinate to pictorial usually photographic presentation of news stories or in which a high proportion of pictorial presentation is used. In other words, photojournalism is news photography. Photojournalism found itself invading photography from the late 1920’s and can be defined as a spontaneous and newsworthy photographic narrative of human events. Fine Art Photography is the new kid on the block. It is usually thought to refer to the visual creation for a specific expressive or aesthetic value. This is often distingui...
What was the first Disney Movie to come out? It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To make this movie Disney ran into a slight problem. Sure, it was easy to animate animals, but humans? To solve the problem, they filmed live actors doing exactly what the characters would do. This would work, but there was still a problem with the size of objects and losing things in the foreground when the camera zoomed. The solution ... a multiplane camera. In this camera, instead of many layers of artwork, there would be two, the foreground and the background. This made zooming in and out easier.
On its surface, a picture is simply a snapshot of the moment in time. However, when analyzed for the beauty and eloquence that could exist within a photo, a simple picture can turn into so much more. It can become a story. A story with the ability to extend far beyond the focal length of aany camera. It can become a story truly worth a thousand words. Josh Haner of the New York Times wrote a beautiful, harrowing story about Boston bomb survivor Jeff Bauman through a photo series in his 2014 feature photography Pulitzer Prize winning piece.
It was important to have light and dark dirt and marks running through the pictures with a really gentle undulation between pale yellows, greens, dark blues, and light flares. In some cases we also went so far as to create digital doubles for some characters. In one shot, the spiked heels of a stripper and the skin of her backside were built in 3D, allowing us to pan past material that had only been captured in a single still shot.
What led you into photography? Was it something you always been interested in or you stumble into it?
As seen in paintings of battle scenes and portraits of wealthy Renaissance aristocracy, people have always strived to preserve and document their existence. The creation of photography was merely the logical continuum of human nature’s innate desire to preserve the past, as well as a necessary reaction to a world in a stage of dramatic and irreversible change. It is not a coincidence that photography arose in major industrial cities towards the end of the nineteenth century.
It is considered that photography only became widely available to the public when the Kodak Eastman Company introduced the box shaped Brownie Camera in 1900. (Baker, n.p.) Its features became more refined since its original placing on the market; one of the reasons why it has become considered the birth of public photography is because of the processing. Using a similar image capture system, the brownie exposed the light to a 120mm roll of film, which could be wound round, meaning six photographs could be taken before the slides needed removing. The first Brownie used a six-exposure cartridge that Kodak processed for the photographer. (Kodak.com, n.d.) Realistically, the armature photographers did not need to understand darkroom processes, they could simply use capture the subjects, and send it to be developed. The cameras were relatively affordable, targeting many different markets, which is apparent from their advertisements. Figure 2 Is an advertisement from for the Eastman Kodak Company’s Brownie Camera; It states in bold lettering “Operated by any school boy or girl” which emphasis how it was targeted for amateur use.
While researching sources pertaining to photojournalism, I came across many authors who published literary works regarding photojournalism; particularly novels, scholarly journals, newspapers, and articles. These authors often concluded that photojournalism changed how many Americans viewed society. Photojournalism originated during 1853 when a photojournalist by the name of Carol Szathmari documented the Crimean War. Throughout the years, photojournalism became a form of journalism depending on images to tell a story. Jacob Riis, a newspaper reporter and a social reformer, helped introduced modern photojournalism when he introduced
The idea for photographing came around in 1814 when Joseph Niépce wanted an image of his son before he left for war. He succeeded in making the first camera in 1827, but the camera needed at least eight hours to produce one picture. Parisian Louis Daguerre invented the next kind of camera in 1839, who worked with Niépce for four years. His camera only needed fifteen to thirty minutes to produce a picture. Both Niécpe’s and Daguerre’s cameras made pictues on metal plates. In the same year Daguerre made his camera, an Englishman by the name of William Henry Fox Talbot made the first camera that photographed pictures on paper. The camera printed a reverse picture onto a negative and chemicals were needed to produce the photo up right. In 1861, color film came along and pictures were produced with color instead of being just black and white. James Clerk Maxwell is credited with coming up with color film, after he took the ...
Photojournalism is a specific form of journalism that employs the use of images to form a news story that meaningfully contributes to the media. This allows a photographer to capture stills that tell the story of a moment in time. Photojournalism creates a transparency between the media and the people as it depicts an accurate representation where meaning can be misinterpreted through text. Photojournalism largely contributes to the way we understand the reality of a moment. Becker (1982) supports this concept as he compares photography to paintings. He says that paintings get their meaning from the painters, collectors, critics, and curators; therefore photographs get their meaning from the way people understand them and use them. Photojournalist’s
What do you consider art? Paintings, sculptures, drawings, or maybe something else. I know, when I think of art, I think of photography. Photography Is used for business, science, manufacturing, art, recreational purposes, mass communication, and more. Photography is using light to do amazing things, and some people think of photography as a story that just needs to be told. Ansel Adams probably believed this. He said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Photography has a long interesting history, like the fact that the word photography is made up of two greek words, photos meaning ‘light’ and graphein which is ‘to draw’ ! Photography also has some complicated techniques to get a hang of taking good photos. Have you heard of the rule of thirds? Or do you know how a camera works? Well, that will all be explained. Maybe, by the end you will take up photography too. This essay will explore the history and types of cameras and the basic rules for taking photographs.
Photography is a word derived from the Greek words “photos” meaning light and “graphein” meaning draw. The word was first used by John F.W Herschel in 1839. It is a method of recording images by the action of light, or related radiation, on a sensitive material (Bellis, N.D).