People have always tried to portray the surrounding reality. From the cave paintings of ancient times to the abstractionism of modern painters, the art of reflecting the world has come a long way. Photography contributed a lot to this.
There are people who consider photography to be a real art. Others are inclined to believe that only the artist's brush can reflect the beauty of the outside world. Nevertheless, photography occupies a worthy place among other visual media.
Light painting as it is
It is generally accepted that photography is only about two or three centuries old. In fact, some of the optical effects that served as the basis for the development of this direction were well known long before the advent of cameras.
In the tenth century AD, a certain Arab scholar Al Ghazen of Basra noted that an inverted image could appear on white walls in darkened rooms. If you look through a narrow hole in a tent or drapery, you can even observe eclipses of the sun without fear of your eyes.
Later, a Russian amateur chemist, under the leadership of Johann Heinrich Schulze, discovered in 1725 that some solutions of silver salts can change color under the influence of the sun. By accidentally mixing chalk with nitric acid, which had some silver in it, he noticed that the white mixture turned dark as soon as light fell on it.
He decided to conduct a series of experiments when he put letters and figures on a bottle of prepared solution. It made prints on silvered chalk. The experiments were essentially just entertainment and only in 1818 the experiments continued. But it wasn't until 1822 that the world's first photograph was taken, by a certain photographer Joseph Niepce. He filmed his own view from the window. This can be considered a full-fledged photo because the image was developed and fixed. The exposition lasted eight hours, and a tin plate covered with a thin layer of asphalt was chosen as the base.
Long way to digital
Today photography has come a long way, becoming not just the lot of masters, but an affordable mass entertainment. There is currently no need for film, developers, fixers, dark rooms and red special light.
It is enough to point the camera at the subject, focus and press the shutter button. Further, the resulting photo can be easily posted on a social network, sent by mail to friends or printed on a photo printer. The processing speed of photographic materials has become simply fantastic compared to conventional film.
Technologies have improved, which are now even three-dimensional. Stereo images could have been obtained at the beginning of the twentieth century, but now they have become more perfect.
