Year 9/10 Visual Arts
Photography
Year 9/10 Visual Arts
Photography
Term 1 Overview
Unit 1 – (9 weeks)
Photography and mixed media
 Making Task – Design a school magazine or Diary
cover.
 Written Task – Research Written Task
History of Photography
Photography saw many different camera designs
and configurations – the early heavy-plate
cameras were replaced by smaller box cameras,
which would eventually lead to the modern
single-lens reflex design.
1900-1920
Film: Plates
Now let’s go back to
the beginning and look
at the history of
photography.
It had long been
known how to
project an image
onto a surface.
If one placed an
object in front of a
small hole, later a
lens, outside a
darkened room
without windows,
light rays would
reflect off the object,
through the hole,
and create a
reversed image on
the opposite wall.
But it wasn’t until
1826 that Nicephore
Niepce invented a
method of retaining
this image forever.
Camera obscura ( means dark room)
Trap door
In 1646, Athanasius Kircher
(1601-1680) described a
camera obscura which
consisted of an outer shell
with lenses in the centre of
each wall, and an inner shell
containing transparent paper
for drawing.
The artist would enter by a
trapdoor.
A typical portable camera obscura at the beginning of the
19th century incorporating a mirror (a), which reflects the
image from the lens (b) onto a glass plate (c) which holds
a sheet of paper on which the image is being traced.
17th century:
Portable camera
obscuras
were frequently
used
by artists to help
draw images.
But it wasn’t until 1827 that
Nicephore Niépce invented a
method of retaining this
image forever.
In 1725 the German
professor J. Schulze mixed
chalk, nitric acid and silver
in a flask. He noticed
darkening on side of the
flask exposed to sunlight.
He had accidentally created
the first photo-sensitive
compound.
In 1827 Nicéphore
Niépce (pronounced Nee-ps)
made the world’s oldest
existing photograph by
exposing a tin plate
coated with a lightsensitive varnish
inside a camera
obscura
for 8 hours
.
()
1827: Niépce created the first permanent
photographic image.
View from Niepce’s Window at Le Gras.
A building is on the left, a tree a third in
from the left, and a barn immediately in
front.
The exposure lasted eight hours, so the sun
had time to move from east to west,
appearing to shine on both sides of the
building.
Niépce called his
images
heliographs (sun
drawings).
Prior to the invention
of photography, all
portraits had to be
meticulously painted.
Napoleon on his Imperial
Throne by Ingres (1780–
1867), painted in 1806.
1834: Henry Fox Talbot
created permanent (negative)
images using paper coated
with salt and silver compound
fixed with salt water.
“Talbot then placed this
negative image over a sheet
of prepared paper and
exposed it to light, producing
a positive image on the
second sheet of paper.”
Talbot had thus
invented the process
of printing positive
images from negative
exposures – this
process eventually
took over from any
other and is the direct
predecessor of
modern analogue
photography.
One of Daguerre’s
first views of Paris.
At first, exposure times of 15 minutes in
bright sunlight were needed but this was
later reduced to between 10 and 60
seconds.
The daguerreotype was
made public in Europe in
1839 and the technology
quickly spread to other
countries.
The daguerreotype was the
first practical and
commercial photographic
process. Daguerreotypes
were fragile, expensive to
produce and exuded a
magical quality.
Daguerreotype of a "Chinese woman,"
identified as Miss Pwan Ye Koo
c. 1850s
Lorenzo G. Chase, photographer
The surfaces were extremely
delicate, which is why they are
often found housed under glass
in a case.
The image was reversed
laterally, the sitter seeing
himself as he did when looking
at a mirror. (Sometimes the
camera lens was equipped with
a mirror to correct this).
The chemicals used (bromine
and chlorine fumes and hot
mercury) were highly toxic.
Exposure times were over 60 seconds, so
this little girl, her pony and
servant, were required to stay as still as
possible while the image was taken
Photography is became useful to capture events
as they unfolded over a shorter period of time.
1871: Richard
Leach Maddox, an
English doctor,
proposes the use of
an emulsion of
gelatin and silver
bromide on a glass
plate, the "dry plate"
process.
1878: Dry plates being manufactured
commercially.
George Eastman
developed both the
transparent roll of film,
and the Kodak Box
Brownie, in 1888, which
took 5.7 cm square
pictures on a roll of film.
Alfred Steiglitz From the BackWindow, 291 (1915)
1907: First commercial color film, Autochrome plates,
manufactured by Lumiere brothers in France
1917: Nippon Kogaku K.K. which eventually
became Nikon, was established in Tokyo.
First Nikon camera:
The Nikon 1
1931: Development of
strobe photography by Harold
("Doc") Edgerton at MIT
whereby a strobe light could
flash up to 120 times a
second.
A droplet is caught
with a strobe after
rebounding upward
In 1935 Kodak introduced the first modern colour
film, Kodachrome.
1947: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David
Seymour start the photographer-owned Magnum
picture agency
Speedgraphic Camera
Standard equipment for press
photographers in the 1960s
Instamatic cameras by Kodak
introduced in 1963.
These cheap, easy-to-load 126 and 110 cameras
were extremely successful, introducing a
generation to low-cost photography.
The name Instamatic is still used, mistakenly, to
refer to any inexpensive “point and shoot”
camera.
1963: First color instant film developed by
Polaroid
Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
With the SX-70 you could just point,
shoot, and watch the image develop
before your eyes.
It was the first Polaroid to
automatically eject the snapshot and
produce images, without making you
wait 60 seconds and peel off the outer
wrapper of the film.
The SX-70 combined simplicity with
immediacy, making it the direct
forebear of today's low-end digital
cameras.
In 1975 Eastman Kodak
engineer Steve Sasson built
the first working CCD-based
(charge coupled device) digital
still camera.
The prototype weighed 3.6kilogram and was the size of a
toaster.
In 1976, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a
show by William Eggleston.
At this moment Photography becomes accepted
by the artworld as an art form.
Untitled 1962 - 68
1990
1994
Adobe Photoshop 1.0 released.
Adobe Photoshop 3.0
“Photoshop has been a killer app since its
introduction on the Mac in 1988, but it wasn't
until years later that this watershed graphics
tool became a must-have for design
professionals. That adoption began in earnest
with Photoshop 3.0 and the introduction of
layers, which allowed designers to play with
images and effects on multiple levels, one
atop another, rather than in a single flat
dimension.
The 50 Greatest
Gadgets of the Past
50 Years
This technology opened the door for image
manipulation on a much grander scale than
had been possible before--and it's also why
you'll never be able to trust a photograph
again.”
In 1991 the Kodak
Professional Digital
Camera System or DCS,
was the first commercially
available DSLR camera.
It was mounted on a
Nikon F3 body .
Aimed at the photo
journalism market in
order to speed up the
transmitting of pictures
back to the studio or
newsroom, the DCS had a
resolution of 1.3
megapixels.
The 1991-era Kodak DCS-100 with
accessories.
“Digital SLRs are often preferred by professional still
photographers because they allow an accurate preview of
framing close to the moment of exposure, and because
DSLRs allow the user to choose from a variety of
interchangeable lenses. Most DSLRs also have a function
that allows accurate preview of depth of field”.
An image with a shallow depth of field
Depth of field is the range of
distance within the subject that is
acceptably sharp.
Understanding Depth of
Field in Photography
In 1994 Kodak and Apple had a joint
venture to create the Apple
QuickTake, the first digital camera
marketed for home use and general
consumers in mind.
The $750 US Quicktake 100 was able to
capture eight 640×480 resolution
images and easily transferred the
images to home computers.
Shortly after the release of the
Quicktake 100, a number of other
cameras marketed for home use were
released — and digital photography
would no longer be limited to the
professionals.
Quicktake
100
In 1999 Nikon announced
the D1.
It cost $5,000 US.
With its megapixel rating of
2.7
it was the first DSLR with
good enough image quality
for print.
Sharp’s J-SH04 was the world's first camera phone
and was launched in Japan in 2000.
Since early in the 21st century
the majority of cameras and of
mobile phones in use are camera
phones.
Camera phone photo, London
Underground, 07/07/05
Most camera phones are simpler
than separate digital cameras.
Their usual fixed focus lenses
and smaller sensors limit their
performance in poor lighting.
2001: Polaroid went
bankrupt.
Another company
took the name
Polaroid Corporation.
It stopped making
Polaroid cameras in
2007 and stopped
selling Polaroid film
after 2009.
Andy Warhol and
ever-present Polaroid
camera
In 2004 Kodak ceased
production of film cameras.
Photographer Steve
McCurry captured this
image of Afghan
orphan Sharbat Gula
in 1984 using
Kodachrome.
He will shoot one of
the last reels of this
historic film and
donate the pictures to
a museum honouring
Kodak founder
George Eastman.
The Kodachrome
Project
In 2005 Canon released
the EOS 5D,
The first consumerpriced full-frame digital
SLR, with a 24x36mm
CMOS sensor,
for $3000.
Both CCD and CMOS image
sensors start at the same
point - they have to convert
light into signals which is
than converted into digital
data.
An image sensor is a device that converts an optical image into
an electronic signal.
A CCD (charge-coupled device) image sensor is an analogue device.
When light strikes the chip it is held as a small electrical charge in
each photo sensor. The charges are converted to voltage one pixel
at a time as they are read from the chip. Additional circuitry in the
camera converts the voltage into digital information.
A CMOS imaging chip is a type of active pixel sensor made using
the CMOS semiconductor process. Extra circuitry next to each
photo sensor converts the light energy to a voltage. Additional
circuitry on the chip may be included to convert the voltage to
digital data.
Neither technology has a clear advantage in image quality.
complementary-symmetry metal–oxide–semiconductor
September 2010
Canon has announced
it has successfully
developed an CMOS
sensor that delivers an
image resolution of
approximately 120
megapixels
(13,280x9184 pixels)
This is 12,000 times
the resolution of the
prototype Kodak digital
camera.
World Press Photo of the Year 2009
by Pietro Masturzo, Italy
From the rooftops of Tehran, June
World Press Photo is sponsored
worldwide by Canon and TNT and the
exhibition has been brought to
Sydney by Canon Australia.