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The History of Photography: The Inmortal Story Essay

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There is only one way to make people immortal. Photography is the process in which one writes with light. Photographs are permanent images of people or things. Photography wasn't always as easy as a click of a button and there you go. It took an immense amount of work to get to the modern day camera. Photography started from experiments made by people to create new ways to communicate through creating permanency in photographs, making prints of photographs and advancing to the modern day camera. Small ideas grew into large projects. Trial and error evolved into what we have today. Photographs were permanently created using several techniques from different photographers. Joseph Nicephore Niepce made the first photographic image with a …show more content…

From the negative image he reversed the light and created positive prints. Frederick Scoff Archer, invented the wet plate negative, using a viscous solution of collocation, he coated glass with light-sensitive silver salts. It was glass and not paper, this wet plate created a more stable and detailed negative. Wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried, this meant carrying along a portable darkroom. The dry plate was invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time; photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms. George Eastman invented film with a base that was flexible, unbreakable, and could be rolled. Emulsions coated on a cellulose nitrate film base, such as Eastman's, made the mass-produced box camera a reality. Prints are a key part in having physical photographs that captures ones memories. Film and prints continued to advance in color and accessibility leading to the modern day camera. Medium-format roll film was created measuring six centimeters wide and had a paper backing making it easy to handle in daylight. This led to the development of the twin-lens-reflex camera. Nitrate film was produced in sheets ending the need for fragile glass plates. Today, technology has produced film with T-grain emulsions. These films use light-sensitive silver grains that are T-shaped, thus rendering a much finer grain pattern and giving a higher resolution.

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