The Birth of Photography has given us a Modern Day Marvel

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The Birth of Photography has given us a Modern Day Marvel

Posted On : Sep-01-2011 | seen (651) times | Article Word Count : 616 |

From the humble origins of the camera obscura to modern day photography . it is something that we take for granted now – try and imagine how it would have been before we had cameras

These days we take the camera for granted. Anyone with a decent mobile phone can capture images, even moving pictures, with sound, something that a few years ago would have required equipment that was barely lift-able, let alone portable. It is good to know that many memories such as school pictures and graduation photography , can be saved and shared for years to come, thanks to all the digital advances in the field.
About 400 years ago, however, the first proponent of the principles of photography was tried for sorcery!
The suspicion of sorcery probably falls into the ‘people fear what they don’t understand’ category, because, as with most things, people opt for the uncanny as an explanation to things they have never seen before, or simply cannot explain. Giambattista Della Porta, also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta had created and perfected the ‘Camera Obscura’ - from the Latin meaning ‘Dark Chamber’. The camera obscura was a room with a hole containing a convex lens on one side which focused inverted images onto the wall on the other side of the room.
The images were those of actors moving around. Porta invited people into the room in order to view the images on the wall. The results - upside down, moving pictures of people on the wall - were simply too much for the participants to stand, and they ran screaming from the room. Imagine - an experience which is repeated every time we go to the movies, or watch TV for that matter, albeit the right way up and with sound, was far too sinister for people to contemplate 400 years ago.
Porta was a renowned, published scientist, and the camera obscura was but one of his achievements, but it became the forerunner of the modern-day camera. Even so, he wasn’t the first to identify the concept of producing images in this way. Nearly 2000 years before Porta, the Greek philosopher Aristotle had already observed the principle of how the camera would work. An Arabic Scholar described the principle in the 10th Century, and Da Vinci wrote about it in his notebooks in the 15th Century. All of this is no surprise, however, because the camera obscura is no more than a crude representation of the human eye:
Light enters the pupil and, modified by a lens, is projected onto the retina at the back of the eye. The image is upside down, but your brain, amongst other things, converts the image into a right – side up full colour image which you can understand.
All of the above was extremely useful, but it did not address the main requirement for photography – keeping a permanent record of the image. For this development, if you will pardon the pun, we would have to wait for another 200 years. Enter physicist Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce who, in around 1816, began his quest to produce permanent photographs. He had his breakthrough in the 1820’s when he discovered a light-sensitive material call bitumen of Judea. Sometime in the mid-1820’s, he placed a pewter plate, coated in bitumen, into a camera obscura for eight hours. The final result was the first known ‘photograph’. Admittedly it was not a very good image at all. It was a very blurred picture of a tree, a building and a barn, but Niepce was delighted with it.
It is from this humble beginning that photograpy has progressed . Today modern technology has allowed us to “save our memories on paper” and record those special occasions such as school pictures and other photographs from our university and graduations etc .

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<h1>The Birth of Photography has given us a Modern Day Marvel</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_barefootedboy.aspx'>barefootedboy</a> These days we take the camera for granted. Anyone with a decent mobile phone can capture images, even moving pictures, with sound, something that a few years ago would have required equipment that was barely lift-able, let alone portable. It is good to know that many memories such as school pictures and graduation photography , can be saved and shared for years to come, thanks to all the digital advances in the field. 
About 400 years ago, however, the first proponent of the principles of photography was tried for sorcery!
The suspicion of sorcery probably falls into the ‘people fear what they don’t understand’ category, because, as with most things, people opt for the uncanny as an explanation to things they have never seen before, or simply cannot explain. Giambattista Della Porta, also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta had created and perfected the ‘Camera Obscura’ - from the Latin meaning ‘Dark Chamber’. The camera obscura was a room with a hole containing a convex lens on one side which focused inverted images onto the wall on the other side of the room. 
The images were those of actors moving around. Porta invited people into the room in order to view the images on the wall. The results - upside down, moving pictures of people on the wall - were simply too much for the participants to stand, and they ran screaming from the room. Imagine - an experience which is repeated every time we go to the movies, or watch TV for that matter, albeit the right way up and with sound, was far too sinister for people to contemplate 400 years ago. 
Porta was a renowned, published scientist, and the camera obscura was but one of his achievements, but it became the forerunner of the modern-day camera. Even so, he wasn’t the first to identify the concept of producing images in this way. Nearly 2000 years before Porta, the Greek philosopher Aristotle had already observed the principle of how the camera would work. An Arabic Scholar described the principle in the 10th Century, and Da Vinci wrote about it in his notebooks in the 15th Century. All of this is no surprise, however, because the camera obscura is no more than a crude representation of the human eye:
Light enters the pupil and, modified by a lens, is projected onto the retina at the back of the eye. The image is upside down, but your brain, amongst other things, converts the image into a right – side up full colour image which you can understand.
All of the above was extremely useful, but it did not address the main requirement for photography – keeping a permanent record of the image. For this development, if you will pardon the pun, we would have to wait for another 200 years. Enter physicist Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce who, in around 1816, began his quest to produce permanent photographs. He had his breakthrough in the 1820’s when he discovered a light-sensitive material call bitumen of Judea. Sometime in the mid-1820’s, he placed a pewter plate, coated in bitumen, into a camera obscura for eight hours. The final result was the first known ‘photograph’. Admittedly it was not a very good image at all. It was a very blurred picture of a tree, a building and a barn, but Niepce was delighted with it. 
It is from this humble beginning that photograpy has progressed . Today modern technology has allowed us to “save our memories on paper” and record those special occasions such as school pictures and other photographs from our university and graduations etc .
About the Author: Gillman and Soame will help you record these moments by getting great <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gillmanandsoame.co.uk/schools/" title="school pictures"> school pictures</a> for the younger children and sharing their knowledge on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gillmanandsoame.co.uk/universities/" title="graduation photography">graduation photography</a> for the older generation Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_The-Birth-of-Photography-has-given-us-a-Modern-Day-Marvel_78639.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_The Birth of Photography has given us a Modern Day Marvel_78639.aspx</a>

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_The Birth of Photography has given us a Modern Day Marvel_78639.aspx

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Gillman and Soame will help you record these moments by getting great school pictures for the younger children and sharing their knowledge on graduation photography for the older generation

Keywords : school pictures, graduation photography,

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