Fun with your Camera

Let’s have some fun below are fun Projects you can do with your Camera:

P1) Take one picture per day taking photographs in your daily life allows yourself to see your life a bit differently. You start to pay attention to different things. Challenge yourself to take one, but only one, picture every single day with your camera. You will find yourself looking more carefully at the world around you as you decide what to photograph. Your perspective on the world might even Change as you do this project!

P2) Make mini-picture stories out of a series of pictures. Take some time for yourself and he out take a walk. While walking collect a series of picture that tell a story. You probably won’t know what the story is until you are halfway through the series. You can text to your story if you choose. This can be a lot of fun especially as you get better and better at it.

P3) Learn to use any advanced functions on your digital camera. Most digital camera have advanced functions like smile detection or auto zoom. Make it a point to learn about all of the different things that you are capable of doing with your camera.

P4) Snap photos of things that inspire you throughout the day. Try to start noticing the things that inspire you through the day. It might be a funny sign that you see or the style of a person standing on a street corner. You can rely on your digital camera to snap the picture that will remind you of the source of inspiration.

P5) Make your own filter. Anything can be a camera filter try things out and see what kind of pictures you can get out of it.

P6) Have a photo day. Invite family and friends over go outside play around and have fun taking pictures with your loved ones

For more Ideas search the web or come with your own there are ideas everywhere

Sources

http://hubpages.com/hub/10-Fun-and-Creative-Projects-To-Do-with-your-Digital-Camera-Phone

The Camera and the Digital Age

The camera has come a long way since its first photo from glass plates to 35mm to digital. Cameras have changed into easy-to-use digital cameras. You no long have to take your film to be developed it’s as easy as shot plug camera in and you have your picture. In an age where everything is simpler the digatel camera can still be very high tech if you buy the right(pricey) one. The digital camera moves photography at a faster pace you are able to capture more photos with more range and take more pictures than ever before.

It is not just the camera that has changed with the digital age but how we print and manipulate prints as well. You no longer have to use a dark with chemicals and red lights. It’s as simple as pressing print on computer. We are able to manipulate photos in a whole new way do to programs like Photoshop Adobe Illustrator and more.

But even in this new digital age you can still find photographers in the dark room.

Video on Tripods in the Digital Age

Source

http://ezinearticles.com/?Camera-Development-From-Film-Era-to-Digital-Age&id=3079768s

http://www.markstechnologynews.com/2009/05/polaroid-pogo-the-instant-camera-jumps-into-the-digital-age.html

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/test/1898766/pentax-645d-tested-contender

http://dna0101.com/page/7

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It comes from the branch of photography because of the quality’s it has:

 Timeliness — the images have meaning in published record of events.

Objectivity — images is a fair and accurate representation of the events that are depict

Narrative — the images are combine with the news elements to make the facts relatable to the viewer.

The practicing of photojournalism began in the 1880’s. The first photojournalist Carol Szathmari a Rumanian painter, lithographer and photographer) he took pictures of the Crimean War. Only a few of the pictures survived and were sent to European royals houses where his pictures were published as engravings. On March 4, 1880, The Daily Graphic of New York published its first halftone reproduction of a news photograph. In 1887, How the Other Half Lives was able to come about because a flash powder was invented that enabling journalists such as Jacob Riis and others to photograph informal subjects indoors.

The golden age of photojournalism came about because of the 35mm Leica camera in 1925 followed by the flash bulbs. In the golden age magazines such as Picture Post (London), Paris Match (Paris), Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Berlin), Berliner Illustrate Zeitung (Berlin), Life (USA), Look (USA), Sports Illustrated (USA)) and newspapers (The Daily Mirror (London), The New York Daily News (New York) built there readers up because of their photographs. Some of the well-known photojournalist at the time was:

Robert Capa,

Alfred Eisenstaedt,

 Margaret Bourke-White

W. Eugene Smith

And Henri Cartier-Bresson who was known as the father of modern photojournalism.

The decline of the photo magazine in the 60’s also caused a decline of the photo. Viewers started to watch more new prod cast on TV then read about them in their home. Photojournalism still excites today even though its day has based and people will still at times stop to pick up a newspaper of magazine because of its photo.

Video of a Photojournalist today

Sources

http://photogo.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/what-it-means-to-be-a-photographer/

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/?p=1978

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalism

Ansel Adams

Even if you don't know a lot about photography you know who Ansel Adams is. Adams was born February 20, 1902 his love for nature and photography was inspired by his boyhood trips to Yosemite. As a young man Adams spent his time traveling in between San Francisco and Yosemite torn between his love of music and Photograph of nature. Adams later went on to give up music and become a commercial photographer for more than 30 years and an environmentalist.

In 1932 he founded the f/64 group with Edward Weston; he also won three Guggenheim grants to photograph the national parks. Adams developed a zone exposure to maximum tonal range from black and white film

Below is a timeline of Ansel Adams life

1902: Ansel Easton Adams born on February 20, in San Francisco, he was the only child of Olive and Charles Adams

1915: Ansel is taken out of school for the year he has private tutors. His father buys a season pass to the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which he visits almost every day.

1916: Family Trip to Yosemite

1925: Ansel buys a grand piano and decides to become a pianist.

1927: First acknowledged photograph.

1940: Teaches the first Yosemite workshop with Edward Weston.

1953: Works with Dorothea Lange on a Life commission for a photo essay on Mormons in Utah  

1962: Adams moves to Carmel, California

1967: he was instrumental in the foundation of the Friends of Photography

1984: Dies April 22 of heart failure aggravated by cancer

Video of an interview with Ansel Adams

Sources

http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/adams.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

Straight Photography

Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form. The term Straight Photography came about in 1880. It means simply a changed photographic print. It is when photograph attempts to depicts a scene objectively and realistically.

Paul Strand's in 1917 characterization of his work as ‘absolute unqualified objectivity’ described. It came to imply a specific aesthetic typified by higher contrast, sharper focus, and the emphasis on the underlying abstract geometric structure of subjects.

Paul Strand was an American photographer and film maker born on October 16, 1890. He was born in New York to Bohemian parents. Strand interest in photography really took off after he visited to the 291 art gallery. His work would later be in the same gallery. Strand also worked in film his first projected was Manhatta in 1921 it was a silent film.

Although strand is mostly well known for his early  work  most of his most significant work I in the form of six books Time in New England (1950), La France de Profil (1952), Un Paese (featuring photographs of Luzzara and the Po River Valley in Italy, 1955), Tir a'Mhurain / Outer Hebrides [1] (1962), Living Egypt (1969) and Ghana: an African portrait (1976).

Video on straight Photography

Pictorialism

We have to talk about the movement Pictorialism; it was a photographic movement from 1885. Pictorialism is when the photographer would mess with the photo either by putting something on the lens or by scratching or putting chemicals on the photo. This was done to add a form of artist work to the photo and the process.

As Kodak introduced the handle in a new group people were able to enjoy the snapshot and it was at this time that small group of photographers staked their medium's claim among the fine arts. They did not just point and shot. They used labor-intensive processes such as they made platinum prints, which yielded rich, tonally subtle images or the used gum bichromate printing, which involved hand-coating artist papers with homemade emulsions and pigments; they made platinum prints, which yielded rich, tonally subtle images. They did not just sit back and take the picture they got involved in the process and became true artist.

One such photographer was Alfred Stieglitz he was born in New Jersey in 1864 he was the son of German – Jewish immigrants. In 1881 his father moved this family to Europe. Later in 1881 he entered Technische Hochschule it was there that he studied under Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.  Vogel was scientist and researcher in the then developing in photography. Stieglitz found photography both an academic challenge and a creative out let for himself. He also met two artists Adolf von Menzel and Wilhelm Hasemann. It was these two artists encouraged him to work with the idea of making art directly from nature. It was because of this that he bought his first camera and traveled through the European countryside taking photographs of landscapes.

Stieglitz returned to the Untied States in 1890 after the death of his sister.  It was there on 16 November 1893 he married Emmeline Obermeyer , in 1894 he took his wife of belated honey moon in which they traveled around Europe. It was on this trip that he meets George Davidson the founder of Linked Ring. When Stieglitz returned to the United States he was elected as one of the first to Americans of the Linked Ring. He used this title to promote his cause of making photography an art form. In 1896 became vice president of the New York Camera club. In 1899 Stieglitz was given a one man show at the club.

1918-1923 Stieglitz would meet and fall in love with Georgia O'Keeffe and would leave his wife for her after six year when his divorce his wife final and married O’Keeffe. The happiness was short lived Stieglitz in 1927 he meet Dorothy Norman the two would come to have an affair. His life may have been full e controversy but he helped photography to become the respected art form it is today.

Video on Pictoralim

Source:

Pictorialism in America | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz

George Eastman and Kodak

We cannot talk about and not talk and George Eastman and Kodak. Eastmen began working at 14-year old as an office boy in insurance company and followed that with working as a clerk in a local bank. At the age of 24, took a vacation to Santo Domingo a co-worker suggested he make a record of the trip. Eastman bought a photographic outfit; he described the outfit as "was a pack-horse load". He never went on the trip but what he did do was become completely obsessed with photography and making the process simpler.

Eastmen read in British magazines about photographers making their own gelatin emulsions. So he began working in the bank during the day and experimenting making gelatin emulsions in his mother’s kitchen at night. By 1880 Eastmen had invented a dry plate formula; he had also patented a machine for preparing a large numbers of the plates. In April 1880, Eastman leased the third floor of a building on State Street in Rochester.  He then began to manufacture dry plates for sale.

Eastmen also said "The idea gradually dawned on me," he later said, "that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair." Or as he described it more succinctly "to make the camera as convenient as the pencil." In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable and 4 years later in 1888 he designed the first camera specifically for roll film. In 1888 Eastmen registered Kodak as a trademark and coined the phrase "You Press The Button and We Do The Rest." Then in 1892 official established the Eastman Kodak Company.

In 1900 Kodak introduced the brownie. It sold for $1 at this price for the first time people every were could afford to have their pictures taken. Kodak was the company to employ a full time scientist. Eastmen official retired from Kodak in 1925 he spent the remainder of his years traveling. On March 14, 1932 Eastmen died he is buried in Kodak Park in Rochester, New York

video of a Kodak ad from the 1960s

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George_Eastman_patent_no_388,850.png

http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/kodak-brownie/kodak-brownie.php?cts=photography-recreation

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/historyOfKodak/eastmanTheMan.jhtml?pq-path=2689&pq-locale=en_US

The First 50 years

 I feel we must talk about Photography as a whole and its first 50 years. Photography came a long way in the first 50 year, it would not be were it is today if it were not for this time.

I believe that the 50 were so important because of how many first took place.

• 1827 First picture: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce uses a camera obscura to burn a permanent image of the countryside of his estate onto a chemical-coated pewter plate.

• 1839 First picture of people: Louis Daguerre photographs a Paris street scene from his apartment window using a camera obscura

• 1847 First picture of lightning: Thomas Easterly makes a daguerreotype of a bolt of lightning

• 1847 First pictures of war: Charles J. Betts uses Daguerretype to take photos of the Mexican-American War

• 1858 First Birds eye veiw: Felix Tournachon captured an aerial photograph in a tethered balloon over Paris

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• 1861 First color photo: A scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell creates a rudimentary color image by superimposing onto a single screen three black-and-white images that each passed through three filters red, green, and blue

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• 1878 First action photo: Eadweard Muybridge, used a emulsions that allowed nearly instantaneous photography to begin taking photograph sequences that capture animals and humans in motion



Sources

 http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photography-timeline.html

Talbot and his Calotype

Ok so next we have to talk about its creator William Henry Fox Talbot. Talbot used to complain about the camera Obscura "the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold" Talbot 1833. Talbot created the Calotype in 1841. A piece of paper was brushed with weak salt solution, once it was dried it was then brushed with a weak silver nitrate solution then dried again making silver chloride in the paper.

Once this process was done it has been made sensitive to light, and is now ready for exposure. This takes half an hour, giving a print image. It was then fixed in a strong salt solution potassium iodide of hypo. The following year he discovered by adding gallic acid, the paper would become more sensitive to light. Because of this it was no longer necessary to expose until the image became visible. Also with further treatment of gallic acid and silver nitrate the image was developed.

Even though the Calotype was popular it could not compare to its rival Daguerreotype, the reason being the following

• its popularity due to patent restrictions
• the materials was less sensitive to light
•  imperfections of the paper reduced the quality of the final print
• the process itself took longer, it had two stages
•  prints would fade.

Over all the Daguerreotype produced a better image then the Calotype

Now let me tell you alittle bit about Talbot. William Henry Fox Talbot was born February 11, 1800. He was the only child for his parents, his father died when he was 5 months old. His mother remarried and gave him two half sisters. Talbot  went to Harrow School in 1811 and then entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1817. He became a Scholar in 1819. He then won the Porson University Prize in Greek verse in 1820. He then won the second Chancellor's Classical Medal. Following this he processed with his M.A. in 1825.

Video on the Calotype
Video on Talbot

Sources

www.uh.edu/engines/epi1839.htm

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/calotype.htm

Daguerreotype

To understand how I came about we have to start at the beginning of photography. The first type was called daguerreotype, it was created by Louis Daguerre and  oseph Nicéphore Niépce. Niepce created the first photographic image in the camera called obscura using asphaltum on a copper plate sensitised with lavender oil, which required a very long exposures.

The Daguerreotype image is formed by the amalgam, or alloy, of mercury and silver. a pool of heated mercury is used to develop the plate that consists of a copper plate with a thin coating of silver rolled in a contact that has previously been sensitised to light with iodine vapour. so as to form silver iodide crystals on the silver surface of the plate.

An image is formed on the surface of a silver plate that looks like a mirror. Was formed the image can easily be rubbed off with a finger and will also oxidize in the air, so to protect the  daguerreotypes they were mounted in a sealed cases or a frame with a glass covering. When you view a daguereotypes a dark surface is used to reflect into the mirrored silver surface. Daguereotypes are very unique by redaguerreotyping the original. so I know that sounds really complicated so below is the like to a video that goes through how it works.

Video on the Daguerreotype

Sources

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype