Technology In Photography Essay

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Ever since its invention, photography has always been very popular. The number of people using the camera throughout the centuries continues to proliferate and with the increase in popularity for this new media came various expansions and technological advancements to the camera as well as the methodology of taking a photograph itself. These advancements did not happen suddenly; the technology and advancements in photography we have today is the product of many centuries of work through a collective effort from many different intellectuals, artists and photographers.
Photography as a movement first started even before the invention of photography with the physionotrace. The physionotrace mechanized a technique for making profiles and permitted
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While staying in Switzerland, Talbot prepared glass plates by darkening them with candle smoke and varnishing the surface so that the soot would stay in place. He then drew or wrote on the plates with a tool that cut through the black coating, and placed them over light sensitive paper. Light exposure transferred the lines of drawing or writing to the paper (Marien, 19). Soon after, Talbot found that a sheet of fine writing paper, coated with salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate, darkened in the sun, and a second coating of salt impeded further darkening or fading. Instead of putting this paper in the camera obscura, he copied items, such as a leaf or lace, directly on the paper. He would set the object on a piece of sensitized paper, cover it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Wherever the light struck, the paper darkened, but wherever the object blocked the light, it remained white. These images were called photogenic drawings (Daniel, “William Henry”). Leaf with Serrated Edge was an image he took in 1839 using this method (Fig. …show more content…
Dry plates had many benefits and made photography easier and faster. They could be stored for a certain period of time and did not need to be prepared and processed close to the time of exposure. Due to dry plates, photographers no longer needed their portable dark rooms. Dry plates worked well with newer, smaller and more portable cameras, called hand cameras and absorbed light rapidly, thus a tripod was no longer needed (“Around the World”). The exiguous amount of exposure time of the dry plate led to the design of camera shutters, which could open and close more quickly than the hand could remove and replace a lens cap. They allowed photographers to record movement, and permitted them greater mobility and anonymity. Along with that, a wider range of hues could be added to these photographs (Marien, 168).
Another type of camera built during this time was the Vortescope. The Vortescope, built by Coburn, comprises of a combination of mirrors that produced an image like that of a kaleidoscope, and then photographed the results. This camera was the result of a short lived movement in English art known as Vorticism, which integrated both futurism and cubism (Marien,

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