Photography: History, Development and its role in Modern Life - Research Paper Example

Photography has established itself as a science and art and finds a wide range of applications in social and professional life of individuals. The evolution of photography in its present form was a long process which took place in various stages of development. Photography has long lasting effects on the society and is deemed as a mechanism of change in modern society because of its ability to have an impact on socio-political, economic and cultural life today. Photography also finds its applications in science and technology; however it has greater impact on the cultural and social life because of its widespread use in electronic media and entertainment industries. Some people criticize the use of photography for promoting obscenity and violence in society; however a large majority believes that photography has proven to be a productive and positive activity. Photography: History, Development and its role in Modern Life Photography The word photography has been derived from two Greek words; photos meaning light and graphe meaning drawing, so photography means drawing with light. It was first used by Sir John Herschel in 1839 while delivering a lecture to the Royal Society of London. The practice of creating long lasting images by recording any wavelength of light (visible or non-visible) is called photography. Photography has widespread applications in social life of an individual and that is why it is classified as a science as well as art. Photography is carried out by capturing an image on a medium; this can be done electronically through image sensor or also chemically by capturing image on light-sensitive material which includes the different kinds of photographic films. Photography essentially involves the use of a lens which focuses the light emitted from an object on the photographic film or light sensor during a fixed interval of time. The light sensors in an electronic or digital camera takes the focused image as the input data which is fed to the data processor in the form of a minute charge on each pixel, the intensity of this charge depends upon the wavelength of light received on a particular pixel. The processor then converts this data into a displayable image in the form of a digital file. In case of a photographic film, an impression of the image focused by the lens is made on the film as it is sensitive to light, this impression is then converted to an image through chemical development and later the image on the photographic film is used to prepare images on paper by using enlarger or contact printing. The image recording device in photography is the camera and the photographic film or the electronic sensor is the receiving media, whereas the data is stored on electronic or magnetic storage. The photographer controls the quality of the image through the use of various functions provided in the camera and thus the quality of the image depends upon the camera as well as the photographer. Photography has widespread applications in various sciences. Photography helps in recording data in all disciplines of science, engineering and arts. In industries photography is being used for surveillance, monitoring and testing. Various manufacturing plants also utilize the photographic images of invisible wavelengths of light for detecting cracks and abnormalities formed in various parts of machinery. Commercially, photography is being used as a very strong medium for advertisement and marketing. Photography has become an integral part of the fashion industry and various designers and textile manufacturers conduct photo shoots for depicting their products. Photography is also a very popular art and has become the part of various cultures. Professional photographers are very keen to record images depicting nature, culture, social issues and landmarks in culture, architecture and industry and very often exhibitions are held for displaying the works of professional photographers. With the rapid advancement and the increase in the affordability of cameras, photography has become a very common source of preserving personal memories and this has made photography the most widely practiced art in the world. Movie cameras also work on the same principle as photographic camera but records images rapidly and that is why the art of moviemaking is classified as a branch of photography (Krages, 2005). History of Camera Camera is the prime image recording device in photography. The word camera was previously used as Camera Obscura meaning the dark chamber because during the early days of photography, images were projected and developed in a dark room and thus the mechanism was termed as Camera Obscura. Camera derives its name and principle of working from the Camera Obscura. The camera has a closed chamber with an aperture which opens momentarily through which light enters the chamber and is focused on the recording medium by the lens of the camera, in this way the image is recorded. The history of camera can be traced back to camera obscura which has been described by Arab scientis Alhazen in his Book of Optics as a mechanism for recording images on a medium. Camera Obscura effectively is a dark chamber with a small opening which when opened allows the light to enter and the image conveyed through this light can be developed on a medium by placing it at the focus of the lens placed in the opening. This mechanism was also studied and used by Greek mathematicians in their experiments. During this time there was no process through which the recorded images could be preserved. Johannes Kepler added a convex lens in the hole of camera obscura for the first time in 1604 and also gave mobility to camera obscura by mounting it on a cart in the form of a tent (Gustavson, 2009). The first portable camera which was small enough in size to put to practical use was built by Johann Zahn in 1685. This camera was good enough to focus images on a screen but the images were recorded manually because no image recording medium was discovered at that time and thus there was no image recording mechanism. However during that time many scientists were working on discovering such a medium because they have observed that light has long lasting effects on certain materials. Nicephore Niepce in 1817 discovered that silver chloride was extremely sensitive to light as it darkened whenever exposed to light. He built a camera of his own and utilized silver chloride as the recording medium and successfully recorded the images of light through his camera. However the mechanism of removing the unaffected silver chloride was not known to Niepce and thus the images did not lasted long and had to be viewed in dark chambers because whole paper became darkened on exposure to light. Later in 1826, Vincent Chevalier utilized bitumen on a pewter plate as a recording medium in the camera as the bitumen hardened on exposure to light. The unhardened bitumen was very easy to remove through chemical reagents and thus the images developed on this type of surfaces were preserved and are still known as the first preserved images in the history of photography and camera. Daguerreotype is the first practical photographic method and has been named after its inventor Louis Daguerre who along with Joseph Nicephore Niepce developed this method in 1836. The camera used was also different from the previously used models however the success achieved can be attributed to the use of the image recording media; a silver coated copper plate treated with iodine vapors and developed with mercury vapors and common salt. During the later part of the 19th century, photographic process evolved further and the first handheld cameras with mechanical shutters were invented. These cameras utilized collodion dry plates and gelatin dry plates as recording media (Raum, 2007). George Eastman is the pioneer scientist and developer in the field of photography and invented the first photographic film by covering a gelatin emulsion on paper and later on celluloid. George Eastman also commercialized camera and thus photography was promoted at a large scale. Kodak was the first camera which was presented for sale in 1888. The design of this camera was very simple and consisted of a box with pre-focused lens and mechanical shutter. The camera was affordable and came with a pre-loaded photographic film with a capacity of taking 100 photographs. However for the development of photographs, the user was required to return the camera to the factory and the camera was reloaded and returned to the user with the developed photographs. George Eastman presented various models of Kodak during the last decade of 19th century. The roll film cameras offered by Eastman were very popular among the users but the only drawback to their popularity was the better quality offered by plate film cameras. Most of the professional photographers preferred plate film cameras; however Eastman was very successful in making the use of camera popular in public. 35 mm film was introduced in the beginning of the 20th century and various models including Leica, Contax and Retina were introduced by various companies in the market which were operated on 35 mm films however due to the large difference in price, the roll film cameras remained popular in public. The reflex cameras which allowed the photographer to view the captured object directly were developed during 1928 to 1952 and during this era various Japanese companies of modern era which include Canon, Yashica and Nikon emerged as pioneers in the camera manufacturing industry; Nikon for the first time introduced system camera with detachable and alterable components. The instant cameras which developed photographs within a minute were also developed during this era (Hills, 2004). With the rapid development in the electronics and automation, the next era in the history of camera and photography was the development of digital cameras. Steven Sasson was the pioneer in this field and developed the first camera without photographic film in 1975; it utilized CCD image sensor chips for image recording. The first commercially available digital camera appeared in 1990 and was known as Logitech Fotoman. Kodak developed its first digital camera in 1991 and it utilized 1.3 mega pixel image sensors. Various Japanese companies further developed digital cameras and large commercial digital cameras were introduced during the end of the 20th century. The digital cameras available today are highly affordable and produce very good quality photographs. The digital cameras have made photography an essential part of the social life today and photography has been adopted as a social practice by a large majority of people today. Evolution of Color Photography Attempts for developing colored photography were made as early as 1840s and scientists and developers tried to discover ways of producing colored images, however the initial attempts were not successful mainly because of the fact that scientists failed to discover a mechanism of retaining the colored image for longer durations. Moreover the development of colored photography also required prolonged exposure to light. A breakthrough in the development of colored photography was achieved with the discovery of three color process presented by James Maxwell in 1855. The existence of colors is attributed to the three types of cone cells present in human eye sensitive to red, green and blue color only and the various different colors of nature are seen by human eye when the various wavelengths of light simulates the different types of cone cells differently. James Maxwell suggested that colored photographs can be achieved by developing the photographic films by projecting the three primary components of colors on the photographic film through triple projection method for utilizing monochrome color separations (Bull, 2009). The concepts presented by James Maxwell were correct but he was not able to suggest a practical process of producing color images. Many scientists continued their effort for producing color images but could not achieve notable success until 1935 when the phenomenon of subtractive colors was introduced. In the process of subtractive color printing of photographs, the 3 primary colors are extracted from white light through dyes and pigments. Cyan, magenta and yellow pigments were used to develop 3 images of the same object which gave red, green and blue impressions respectively. The images when superimposed resulted in the formation of the first colored photograph. However, the whole process was too time consuming and laborious for being utilized extensively in the development of photographs. The first colored prints on paper was produced by Louis Ducos du Hauron in 1868 who utilized the same process and developed separate photographic films for printing an image in one primary color and then superimposed the images of the other two colors on the same paper to produce a complete colored photograph. In 1873, a German scientist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel developed a photographic film sensitive to all three primary colors by adding small amounts of aniline dyes to the photographic film emulsion and in this way colored impressions of photographs were received on a single photographic film for the first time in history. During the beginning of the 20th century, the first colored cameras were also developed which could focus colored images on the recording media in a very small exposure time. These cameras utilized three filters, each for one of the primary colors. These filters instantaneously followed one another during the exposure time giving a particular color impression on the recording medium and thus a complete colored image was recorded on the photographic film. The first colored images were seen through a combination of kromograms and chromoscopes. Joly screen process was developed in 1920’s but could not become popular due to the difficulty experienced by the users. Lumiere Autochrome was another plate developed for viewing colored photographs in 1907; however it also could not gained popularity due to the high price. The concept presented by Vogel in 1875 was utilized by Kodak in 1935 as it developed the first colored photographic film known as kodachrome which had the ability to record all three primary colors on the same film. After the development of kodachrome, the art of colored photography was commercialized and reached public for the first time. The prints were obtained on special celluloid covered papers, white in color. The pigments utilized for printing were cyan, magenta and yellow. The colored photographs were difficult to preserve as compared to the black and white photographs and special housing boxes and photo albums were introduced for preserving the colored photographs. After the development of kodachrome and other commercial colored photographic films, the art of photography gained more popularity among general public and also in industry and businesses. Color photography was accepted more rapidly than black and white photography as it had more applications in industry and businesses and it provided a unique mechanism of preserving image records. With the development of colored photographic films, colored motion pictures were also introduced which revolutionized the cinema industry. Modern Day Photography Today photography is being carried out on various levels which include amateur or household photography, commercial photography, artistic photography and scientific photography. With the development of the cheap photographic devices, digital cameras with unlimited storage and cheap means of producing photographic images, photography has achieved new heights of popularity among the public and almost every adult in the modern developed societies has a digital camera of his own or a camera in his mobile phone device. Photography is used for keeping records of family events and has contributed towards social harmony. The social networking websites are also contributing greatly towards the increasing popularity of photography. On commercial level photography is being utilized mostly in the advertising and marketing businesses. Photographs give a unique opportunity to the organizations for presenting their products in an effective way. Photography has also helped in developing the fashion industry and fashion photography has become a profession of its own. In men’s magazines, photography is being used commercially by objectifying women with glamorous images. Police and other law enforcement agencies are also using photography for security purposes and also for keeping record crime scene details. The immense developments in photography have also lead to the emergence of photojournalism in which journalists document news stories through images (London, Stone & Upton, 2010). Techniques like ultraviolet photography, spectroscopy and infrared photography have various applications in the fields of science and engineering. Spectroscopy is a very effective technique for experimentation in physics and for discovery of various natural phenomena. In engineering ultraviolet and infrared photography is used for detecting various abnormalities in structures and machinery. Photography is also regarded as an art and various commercial and professional photographers depict their photographs of natural phenomena, wildlife and monuments through exhibitions which are very popular among public. These pieces of arts are also sold at very high prices (Ray, 1999). Photography and Humanity Photographs depict a relationship between the photographer and the image because when a photographer objectifies an image, he is actually admiring any particular aspect of the image. Considering this theory, photography has various socio-cultural implications on humanity. Photography is the strongest way of preserving and forwarding the culture of a community to other communities and the later generations (Freund, 1980). Photography has various other positive impacts on the society, as discussed earlier, photography finds various applications in the field of science and engineering, thus it is also a contributor towards the technological development of society. Some scholars have highlighted the negative impact of photography as well. It is true that photography has promoted voyeurism to some extent and women are very easily objectified through photography in the form of men magazines and pornographic motion pictures. Moreover, photography is also believed to promote violence as depicted by the news reports and also in some movies. The explicit images are very easily accessible to minors now and results in desensitizing. But still it’s the matter of choice on the part of an individual to pick up the positives or negatives out of it. Photography has become a medium to bring change in society as it can convey ideas and beliefs in the most effective way. It has played a very important role in realizing the concept of global village because the cultures and traditions of one region of the world are very effectively conveyed throughout the world. The personal life of the individuals has also changed and photography has become an imperative part of life as it allows people to preserve their memories. Thus the overall impact of photography on humanity can be termed as positive and productive (Marien, 2006). Conclusion The importance of photography can be realized from the fact that it has become an essential part of various aspects of life ranging from science and technology to social and personal life of an individual. The development of photography was a slow and gradual process, however scientists and developers were very keen to develop this art and science because they were aware of the positive impact it can bring in society. Photography is certainly one those phenomena which revolutionized the life of man and resulted in the emergence of the modern world. References Bull, S. (2009). Photography. Taylor and Francis. Freund, G. (1980). Photography & society. D. R. Godine. Gustavson, T. (2009). Camera: a history of photography from daguerreotype to digital. Sterling Innovation. Hills, L. (2004). The Camera. Capstone Press. Krages, B. (2005). Photography: the art of composition. Skyhorse Publishing Inc. London, B., Stone, J., & Upton, J. (2010). Photography. Prentice Hall. Marien, M. (2006). Photography: a cultural history. Laurence King Publishing. Raum, E. (2007). The History of the Camera. Heinmann Library. Ray, S. (1999). Scientific photography and applied imaging. Focal Press. Read More