World Photography Day 2022: History And Significance

By: Sukhada

Published On: August 18, 2022

Look at the photograph below. It may look like an abstract art or some random picture but it’s not. So, what is it that makes this picture different? Well, there’s an interesting story behind it.

Picture source: www.wikipedia.org

The above image was captured in the commune of Le Gras by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a Frenchman who experimented with photographic techniques. It is a view from the window of his house. The view was projected through a camera obscura (a dark room with a small hole) on a pewter plate that had a bitumen coating. The setup was called a heliograph. It was developed with lavender oil and needed to be exposed for 8 hours. The image thus developed was somewhat blurry to recognize. Thus, the photograph you just saw is the first photo ever clicked and preserved. This is a heliographic image and is called ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’.

Invention And Development Of Camera

Camera Obscura: The word has been derived from the Latin words meaning ‘dark chamber’. The camera obscura is the simplest photographic technique. Basically, a camera obscura is a dark room with just one hole for the light to enter. The light projects on the wall opposite to the one with a hole. The image formed is upside down as shown in the image below.

Picture source: www.istockphoto.com

Daguerreotype Camera: This camera was developed by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre of France in collaboration with Nicéphore Niépce. The camera was capable of producing more detailed images on highly polished, silver-plated sheets of copper. The sheets are placed in a large box and are sensitized with iodine. The film is developed in mercury fumes and is stabilized with salt water or sodium thiosulfate thus producing better images than in camera obscura.

Picture source: www.istockphoto.com

The Reisekamera: Also known as Chambre De Voyage, this is a wooden frame camera. The rear panel consists of a plate holder interchangeable with a focusing screen back or a rotable back. The cameras used adapters for film packs or roll films. The bellows were typically made of leather. The reisekamera had a more sturdy body in comparison to the above two types.

Picture source: www.istockphoto.com

Instant Cameras: The first Polaroid or instant camera appeared in 1947. It consisted of a positive roll paper and developing chemicals. The job of the roll was to bring together the exposed negative and positive papers together. The negative paper is covered with three layers of silver compounds. Thus, when a picture is clicked, the shutter opens to let the light in which then gets reflected on the photographed image.

Picture source: www.wikipedia.org

TLR/SLR Cameras: TLR stands for Twin-lens Reflex camera whereas SLR stands for Single-lens Reflex camera. The TLR uses two objective lenses of the same focal length out of which one lens is a photographic objective whereas the other one is the viewfinder lens. The SLR uses a mirror and prism system to capture images. This allows the photographer to view through the lens and capture the image. In both TLRs and SLRs the viewed image could be very much different from the resulting image.

Picture source: www.wikipedia.org

Digital SLRs: DSLRs have grown popular lately. These cameras are a combination of an SLR and a digital imaging sensor, hence the name DSLR. In this design, light travels from the lens of the camera to the mirror. When the shutter button is pressed, the light enters the prism after getting reflected by the mirror resulting in an image very similar to that viewed from the viewfinder. These cameras typically use autofocus based on phase detection.

Picture source: www.istockphoto.com

Phone Cameras: This one needs no introduction. Phone cameras are being used on a large scale and have now become substitutes to traditional cameras. Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210 is said to be the first commercial camera phone in the world which was released in Japan in May 1999. Back then, it was called a ‘mobile videophone’ and had a 110,000-pixel camera. There has been a rapid evolution in mobile phones and their cameras ever since.