History of Photography 9/8/09

In 1826 a french inventor named Joseph Nicèphore Nièpce used a camera obscura to hurn a permanent image of the countryside at his Le Gras, France, estate onto a chemical-coated pweter plate. He named his technique "Heliography" meaning "sun drawing". The black and white exposure takes eight hours and fades significantly, but an image is still visible on the plate today.

In 1839 a french painter and chemist named Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre photographed a Paris street scebne from his apartment window using a camera obscura and his newly invented daguerreotype process. The long exposure time (several minutes) means moving objects like pedestrains and carriages don;t appear in the photo. But an unidentified man who stops for a shoeshine remains still long enough to unwittingly become the first person to be photogarphed.

-Thanks to these pioneers in photography, the pictures we have so commonly take for granted these days are magnificent works of art that took more than a hundred years to become what it is today.