The Art of Photography

History of Photography
• Photography started with a camera and the basic idea
has been around since about the 5th Century B.C. For
centuries these were just ideas until an Iraqi scientist
developed something called the camera obscura
sometime in the 11th Century. Even then, the camera
did not actually record images, they simply projected
them onto another surface. The images were also upside
down. The first camera obscuras used a pinhole in a tent
to project an image from outside the tent into the
darkened area. It took until the 17th Century for camera
obscuras to be made small enough to be portable and
basic lenses to be added.
 The First Camera
• Camera Obscura - this was a simple box
with a pinhole on one side. On the
opposite side was a glass screen. Light
coming from the pinhole projected an
image onto the glass screen.
 Refinement made to
camera obscura
• Daguerreotype – was an image made on
copper plates coated with highly polished
silver.
• Photogenic drawing – was the process of
coating a sheet of drawiong paper with
silver chloride. The paper was then placed
inside a camera obscura. The process
produced a negative
 Contributors
Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre
&
Joseph Niepce

Inventors
of the
Daguerreotype
 William Henry Fox Talbot
His contribution is the
Calotype
which was the result of a process called
photogenic drawing
 Types of Photography
• Fine art photography, sometimes simply called art photography, refers to high-quality archival photographic
prints that are produced to fulfill the creative vision of an individual professional and often reproduced in limited
editions.
• Documentary photography usually refers to a type of professional photojournalism, but it may also be an
amateur or student pursuit. The photographer attempts to produce truthful, objective, and usually candid
photography of a particular subject, most often pictures of people.

• Glamour or Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion
items. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines. Over time,
fashion photography has developed its own aesthetic in which the clothes and fashions are enhanced by exotic
locations and story lines.
• Landscape Photography is artistic interpretations of the land, its features, beauty and its definition.
• Advertising Photography. Photos made to illustrate a service or product. These images are generally done
with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.
• Aerial Photography is the taking of photographs from above with a camera mounted, or hand held, on an
aircraft, helicopter, balloon, rocket, kite, skydiver or similar vehicle. It was widely used for military purposes
during World War I.
• Portrait photography has been around since the invention and popularization of the camera, and is a cheaper
and often more accessible method than portrait painting, which had been used by distinguished figures before
the use of the camera.

• Wildlife photography is the act of taking photographs of wildlife, which is regarded as being one of the more
challenging forms of photography as it has several different requirements.

• Propaganda photography is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to
influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or
commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be
factual) via mass and direct media channels.
Types of camera being used today