projected upside down images.....

 

The first camera was the camera Obscura that was used by artist and draftsmen to trace images formed on walls. It was like a kind of projector that projected upside down images that were temporary. These artists and scientists wanted to have permanent images and so they kept on working on the camera Obscura. In the 1820’s a French man named Joseph Niepce found a way to create a permanent image from the camera Obscura. Niepce was a poor business man who was always ill and in need of money. He kept the process of his experiment as a Secret until 1829 when he became ill and joined a partnership with Louis Daguerre a Paris artist and entrepreneur.

 

The Daguerreotype...

 

Niepce died in 1833 before he could reap the rewards of his works while Daguerre continued to work on Niepce’s inventions. He perfected it and later named it the Daguerreotype which was publicly made known in 1839 and Daguerre published a 79-page manual explaining the process. Not soon after it became famous in many countries and languages.The daguerreotype had a weakness in that each photographic plate comprised the finished image and could not be replicated.

The Paper Negative...

It was an Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot who improved upon the effectiveness of photography by inventing the paper negative from which more than one prints could be made. The paper negative was ignored by the public as they thought it was inferior to the daguerreotype.

 

The Collodion Wet-plate Process...

 

However, either of the two processes stayed in for long. In 1851 a British sculptor and photographer namedFedrick Scott Archer invented the collodion wet-plate process which replaced the daguerreotype and paper negative process. This new process was able to produce a glass plate photograph o fine detail and great beauty. Later on, scientists and artists all over began to use and perfect the new photographic process and each tailored it to their own interests and skills. Many artists took advantage of the process and created portraits of many persons. In addition to that photographers began to make images of landscapes and architecture.

 

 

Lewis, G. (1995). Photojournalism: content and technique (2nd ed.). United States of     America: McGraw Hill Publishing.