A PERMANENT RECORD
Perhaps the most impressive but underappreciated early contributor to photography was Sir John F. W. Herschel, an Englishman. When Herschel learned of Daguerre's discovery, he set out to see if he could duplicate the results without knowing anything about the process, which was still a closely guarded secret.
In several weeks Herschel accomplished what had taken Daguerre several years to do; he even improved on the process by remembering an 1819 experiment in which he had observed that hyposulfate of soda dissolved silver salts. He tried the experiment again, hoping he could use the chemical to "fix" his images permanently, something Daguerre had been unable to do. It worked— and hyposulfate of soda, now known as sodium thiosulfate, is used to fix photographic images to this day.
NO-MAN'S-LAND
In 1837 Louis Daguerre discovered how to create a lasting detailed photographic image. Within months of the groundbreaking publication of his photographic process in 1839, people started taking cameras to Greece, to the Middle East, to Africa, to Central and South America, and to every other corner of the world to photograph the wonders they saw there.
However, if you look at these early photographs, you will notice that no matter what the scene, there is always one thing missing from the picture: people. These first photographs appear barren and empty, completely devoid of human or even animal life. It is as if each had been taken in a ghost town.
STILL SHOTS
It turns out that there were plenty of people in these scenes when the pictures were taken; they just cannot be seen because they were moving. The early photosensitive chemicals took so long to form an image—30 minutes on a sunny day, an hour or more when it was cloudy—that pedestrians and street traffic passed in and out of the picture without registering.
The American inventor Samuel Morse noted this when he was invited to look at some of Daguerre's first photographs in 1839. One daguerreotype was a view of a busy Paris street, taken in the middle of the day when there must have been hundreds of people out. Only one person—quite possibly the first ever to be captured on film—was visible in the picture, and this only because he had been standing relatively still. Morse wrote to his brother:
Moving objects leave no impression. The boulevard, though constantly crossed by a flood of pedestrians and carriages, appeared completely deserted, apart from a person who was having his boots polished. His feet, must of course, have remained immobile for a certain time, one of them being placed on the boot-black's box, the other on the ground.
FACE TIME
The irony was that people living in the late 1830s and early 1840s wanted pictures of themselves and their loved ones more than any other photographic subject. Mortality rates were much higher then, and the pain of a death in the family was made worse by the fact that families frequently had no images of the deceased to remember them by. Only the wealthy were able to commission portraits of themselves. Now photography, with its promise of "automatic" portraits, seemed to offer the possibility of making portraiture available to everyone.
Understanding this need, photographers started looking for ways to take photographic portraits. They located their studios in rooftop glass houses to maximize available sunlight; they crammed those studios with mirrors to bring in even more light. They even filtered the sunlight through blue glass or bottles of blue liquid to take advantage of the fact that early photographic plates were especially sensitive to blue light (the lightbulb was not invented until 1879).
SAY "CHEEEEEESE"
Even with all of these measures, exposure times remained quite long—20 minutes or more—leaving the aspiring portraitist little choice but to resort to desperate measures. Since there was no easy way to stare at a fixed point in space for such a long time, many photographers instructed their subjects to pose with their eyes closed...and that was just the beginning: "Paint the face of the patient dead white," one daguerreotypist advised in 1839. "Powder his hair, and fix the back of his head between two planks attached to the back of an armchair and wound up with screws."
Posing for a portrait in such a studio was almost unbearable, something akin to having your picture taken inside a hot car with the windows rolled up and your head in a vise. The heat trapped by all that glass sent the temperature soaring, and the light from the mirrors was blinding. Looking "natural" under these conditions—sweating profusely, eyes squinting or closed, hair powdered, face painted white, head held immobile by boards while sitting perfectly still for 20 minutes or more—was just about impossible. Even when the pictures did come out, they were usually disappointing.
NEW AND IMPROVED
Fortunately, the first major improvements in daguerreotype photography came quickly. In 1840 Hungarian
mathematician Jozsef Max Petzval invented a lens that let 22 times more light into the camera, reducing exposure times from 40 minutes to 2 ½ minutes. That same year, English scientist John Frederick Goddard discovered that exposing daguerreotype plates to bromine vapors increased their photosensitivity, further shortening exposures to under a minute.
So what does Daguerre's process have to do with the modern photograph? Almost nothing. Daguerre became world famous, but his process was flawed—it only resulted in a single unique image. Daguerreotypes could not be reproduced, and ultimately the process fell into disuse.
The true father of modern photography was English physicist William Henry Fox Talbot. In a sense, what Talbot did was invent the negative—a reverse image on photosensitive paper that could be used to make any number of positive prints, or "calotypes" as they came to be called. Talbot invented his process in 1835, but never published his findings or patented his original process. Therefore, when Daguerre came along two years later, he got all the credit for inventing photography. It turns out that Daguerre was not just smart, he was also very lucky.
Perhaps the most impressive but underappreciated early contributor to photography was Sir John F. W. Herschel, an Englishman. When Herschel learned of Daguerre's discovery, he set out to see if he could duplicate the results without knowing anything about the process, which was still a closely guarded secret.
In several weeks Herschel accomplished what had taken Daguerre several years to do; he even improved on the process by remembering an 1819 experiment in which he had observed that hyposulfate of soda dissolved silver salts. He tried the experiment again, hoping he could use the chemical to "fix" his images permanently, something Daguerre had been unable to do. It worked— and hyposulfate of soda, now known as sodium thiosulfate, is used to fix photographic images to this day.
NO-MAN'S-LAND
In 1837 Louis Daguerre discovered how to create a lasting detailed photographic image. Within months of the groundbreaking publication of his photographic process in 1839, people started taking cameras to Greece, to the Middle East, to Africa, to Central and South America, and to every other corner of the world to photograph the wonders they saw there.
However, if you look at these early photographs, you will notice that no matter what the scene, there is always one thing missing from the picture: people. These first photographs appear barren and empty, completely devoid of human or even animal life. It is as if each had been taken in a ghost town.
STILL SHOTS
It turns out that there were plenty of people in these scenes when the pictures were taken; they just cannot be seen because they were moving. The early photosensitive chemicals took so long to form an image—30 minutes on a sunny day, an hour or more when it was cloudy—that pedestrians and street traffic passed in and out of the picture without registering.
The American inventor Samuel Morse noted this when he was invited to look at some of Daguerre's first photographs in 1839. One daguerreotype was a view of a busy Paris street, taken in the middle of the day when there must have been hundreds of people out. Only one person—quite possibly the first ever to be captured on film—was visible in the picture, and this only because he had been standing relatively still. Morse wrote to his brother:
Moving objects leave no impression. The boulevard, though constantly crossed by a flood of pedestrians and carriages, appeared completely deserted, apart from a person who was having his boots polished. His feet, must of course, have remained immobile for a certain time, one of them being placed on the boot-black's box, the other on the ground.
FACE TIME
The irony was that people living in the late 1830s and early 1840s wanted pictures of themselves and their loved ones more than any other photographic subject. Mortality rates were much higher then, and the pain of a death in the family was made worse by the fact that families frequently had no images of the deceased to remember them by. Only the wealthy were able to commission portraits of themselves. Now photography, with its promise of "automatic" portraits, seemed to offer the possibility of making portraiture available to everyone.
Understanding this need, photographers started looking for ways to take photographic portraits. They located their studios in rooftop glass houses to maximize available sunlight; they crammed those studios with mirrors to bring in even more light. They even filtered the sunlight through blue glass or bottles of blue liquid to take advantage of the fact that early photographic plates were especially sensitive to blue light (the lightbulb was not invented until 1879).
SAY "CHEEEEEESE"
Even with all of these measures, exposure times remained quite long—20 minutes or more—leaving the aspiring portraitist little choice but to resort to desperate measures. Since there was no easy way to stare at a fixed point in space for such a long time, many photographers instructed their subjects to pose with their eyes closed...and that was just the beginning: "Paint the face of the patient dead white," one daguerreotypist advised in 1839. "Powder his hair, and fix the back of his head between two planks attached to the back of an armchair and wound up with screws."
Posing for a portrait in such a studio was almost unbearable, something akin to having your picture taken inside a hot car with the windows rolled up and your head in a vise. The heat trapped by all that glass sent the temperature soaring, and the light from the mirrors was blinding. Looking "natural" under these conditions—sweating profusely, eyes squinting or closed, hair powdered, face painted white, head held immobile by boards while sitting perfectly still for 20 minutes or more—was just about impossible. Even when the pictures did come out, they were usually disappointing.
NEW AND IMPROVED
Fortunately, the first major improvements in daguerreotype photography came quickly. In 1840 Hungarian
mathematician Jozsef Max Petzval invented a lens that let 22 times more light into the camera, reducing exposure times from 40 minutes to 2 ½ minutes. That same year, English scientist John Frederick Goddard discovered that exposing daguerreotype plates to bromine vapors increased their photosensitivity, further shortening exposures to under a minute.
So what does Daguerre's process have to do with the modern photograph? Almost nothing. Daguerre became world famous, but his process was flawed—it only resulted in a single unique image. Daguerreotypes could not be reproduced, and ultimately the process fell into disuse.
The true father of modern photography was English physicist William Henry Fox Talbot. In a sense, what Talbot did was invent the negative—a reverse image on photosensitive paper that could be used to make any number of positive prints, or "calotypes" as they came to be called. Talbot invented his process in 1835, but never published his findings or patented his original process. Therefore, when Daguerre came along two years later, he got all the credit for inventing photography. It turns out that Daguerre was not just smart, he was also very lucky.
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