These days, photography is something that can be done by almost everyone, because cameras are pretty much everywhere. This is why people, both amateurs and professionals, can do everything from simple point and shoot photography, all the way to specialty skills like product, architectural, and commercial photography. But before this was possible, photography had to undergo over 200 years of development, using the ideas and experiments done by the ancient minds from over thousands of years ago.
Long before the dawn of chemical photography, our ancient ancestors have already begun experimenting on the fundamentals and concepts that will make photography possible. Ancient philosopher Mo Ti, and almost at the same time, Greek mathematicians Euclid and Aristotle, have toyed with what is called a pinhole camera, from as far back as the 5th and 4th centuries BC. But it wasn’t just the ancient Greeks and Chinese that experimented, because during this time, Byzantine mathematicians have also been using their form of a camera obscura for multiple experiments.
But all of the examples above simply dabbled with the basic principles of photography, because it wouldn’t be until 1826, that the first actual and permanent photograph would be produced. It was an image made by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, whose photographs were made on a combination of polished pewter plate, and bitumen of Judea, which hardens when exposed to light. Once the bitumen hardens on the metal plate, it leaves a negative image which can then be used to produce a print, by coating it with ink and pressing on paper.
From that point onward, many more developments in the basic process would be made over the years, like the calotype process, invented in 1840 by Fox Talbot, which used paper sheets covered in silver chloride. The paper sheet would then be used to make an intermediate negative image, which is needed, and used, to create the final positive print. It is this paper, along with the way the prints would be made, that would be one of the foundations of modern chemical film and modern film development.
But it wasn’t just film and camera technologies that were being advanced during that time, because even the methods of taking photos were taking huge strides. In 1849, a Russian photographer named Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, a man who created a bellows camera design that improved the way photographers would focus, began using artificial light in studios, to take photos of subjects. It was a far cry from the old ways of using simple or natural light, and have earned him numerous awards during his time, in addition to beginning the trend of studio photography.
All of these past milestones laid the groundwork for further development, which would lead to us enjoying the benefits of modern cameras today. Digital photography is now the norm in many areas, opening the doors to further developments in photography in the future. This would then attract even more people to photography, both as a hobby and as a career.
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