Unit 55 photography & photographic practises Lecture – Connor Glynn

Jamie Keys

The history of photography is a long and intriguing story, one which dates back to 1826 . Since then photography has played a vital part in telling the story of mankind and documenting change and monumental events that changed the world. In 1826 Nicéphore Niépce created a image of the view from his window, this photo required a four hour exposure but not long after this the daguerreotype process was created which allowed photographs to be taken using just a few minutes of exposure time, this was in 1839 and from that year on it is said photography was created as an industry. Fast forward to 1888 when Kodak created there first camera which contained a twenty foot roll of paper which was capable of printing 100 2.5 inch photograph’s. Then in 1909 the first commercial colour film is created by two brothers in France, this soon caught on and photographs with colour started spreading like wild fire. Almost forty years later a company called polaroid was formed bringing photography to many people. A polaroid camera is basically a small inexpensive camera that can print photos with the use of its wet darkroom compartment. Many people used this type of camera because of the ability to print their photographs instead of using a darkroom to develop them. Then in 1970 William Wegman begins to photograph his Weimaraner, man ray (his dog) many photographs were taking of the dog and most of them are well known and famous. Snap forward a few years to 1990 when Adobe releases Photoshop, which was a huge movement in photography. With Photoshop a photographer could adjust various aspects such as exposure, clarity and add or remove things into there photos. With technology advancing Kodak realises the first digital SLR (single lens reflex) in 1991 which was a modified Nikon F3 camera. This was the start of the end of film cameras, within the next few years digital more less wiped out film photography. Sadly in 2001 Polaroid wend bankrupt due to the uprising of digital cameras, closely followed by Kodak which ceased production of there film cameras in 2004. This is a short history of photography.