What Two Words Is "Photography" Derived From?

Contents

• φωτός +γραφή = drawing with light …
• But where and how did Photography start?
• The beginning of commercial photography
• Merely how were the showtime photographs made?
• Cottingley Fairies
  • Cottingley Fairies
  • The rest of the world hears of the Cottingley Fairies

φωτός +γραφή = d rawing with light …

Take you ever deleted a photo past accident, simply to realise that you don't have a copy? Well, can y'all imagine taking painstaking hours to take only one landscape photograph, only for the materials to disintegrate? No? Well this is what the early pioneers of photograph had to contend with! The give-and-take photography comes from the Greek words φωτός (light) and γραφή (drawing). This quite literally ways 'drawing with light'.

For equally long as I tin can think, I've loved learning most the etymology of words. Plus, if you've been reading this blog or following me on Instagram for all of two seconds, you lot'll know that I'm a little chip more than obsessed with photography! So it makes sense that the time has come for me to combine my two loves into one short and handy blog post.

But where and how did Photography start?

Information technology'due south hard to pinpoint the exact start of photography as it depends on what your definiton of 'photography is'. And that'southward because the first photography did non capture an epitome but merely projected information technology into a 'camera obsucra' (night room).

A Camera Obscura is basically where a beam of calorie-free is projected through a pin point pigsty into a darkened space (this can be annihilation from a professional room to a tent- the simply requirement is that the space be nighttime). Estimates suggest that mankind has been using this class of low-cal project from as early equally 30,000 BCE. This means that perhaps photography is 32,000 + years old!

It's believed that a lot of artists used a photographic camera obscura in order to aid them in drawing. Using the projection, they would just need to sketch over the projection in lodge to create an accuratre representation of the suject. Evidently most artists denied doing this!

Photo below: a camera obscura carving dating from 1544!

Believe information technology or not, photography every bit we know information technology, with a printed image, has been around for about 200 years (woah)! The first ever photograph is believed to accept been taken in 1826; thus at the time this post is written, photography is at to the lowest degree 190 years old.

Although the photograph is supposedly taken from a window, it looks similar information technology may has well have taken a picture of the floor. However, whatever the subject, the photo is still impressive. I mean, it's the first photo to accept alwayssurvived! The photo was taken by French inventor Joseph Niepceand the exposure fourth dimension was viii hours!Drawing with lite indeed!

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The showtime of commercial photography

Photography as a hobby/ photography on a commercial level did not commencement for another xiii years in 1839. It'due south therefore often said that the 'real' birth of photography was in 1839. The very aforementioned year, the very starting time 'selfie' was created! Robert Cornelius, chemist and lensman lover, took a cocky-portrait in what is believed to be the world's first portrait.

Considering that photographs would have to exist exposed for up to 10-xv minutes but to get plenty calorie-free into the camera, I'm surprised that the photo is so sharp and in focus! Oh, and that the photograph has survived 170 years is ever a plus!

Surprisingly, the first colour photograph (that actually lasted) was taken as early on as 1861 past a physicist and mathematician… It's a photo of a tartan ribbon tied in a knot!I personally think information technology looks a picayune bit like 'the gold snitch'!

But how were the start photographs made?

Before digital applied science, photographs were made through compex chemical reactions. This is why so many of the photography pioneers were also Chemistry enthusiasts. It as well happens to be why so many of the first photographs no longer survive to this day; they were made using volatile materials that easily disintegrated.

The first successful photo was made by shining low-cal projected using a camera obscura onto a pewter plate. A cocktail of chemicals, including the naturally occuring tar, bitumen, was used to procedure the low-cal in such a way that it left an impression on the pewter plate. The process was and then refined; silver replaced the bitumen and the exposure time was lowered.

Since that very first photo was taken in the early on 1800s, technological advances have charged forwards at an phenomenal rate. Today, photography is one of the about popular hobbies in the earth, an industry that is worth billions annually. In fact, if y'all've non picked up a camera notwithstanding, I highly recommend it!

Cottingley Fairies

Two cameras, five photographs, and a children'south volume were all that it took to fool the globe. 2 little girls managed to convince the globe that fairy tales exist and paranormal lies simply around the corner… The Cottingley Fairies appeared a century ahead of their time.

Before the age of Facebook,  Photoshop, and prior to the smartphone, at that place were the Cottingley Fairies. A serial of five photographs appearing to testify that fairies exist. In what may well be the instance of the oldest doctored photos in history, i set of snaps fooled people into believing in the paranormal for decades…

Cottingley Fairies

Although photography began equally early on as the 1800s, photos remained a rare fine art form well into the 1900s. Expensive, hard to manage and not readily available to the general public, nigh people had few snaps taken of themselves during their lifetime. And even fewer had access to a camera.

In 1917, a nine-yr-old girl arrived in the UK with her female parent to stay in the hamlet of Cottingley, England with cousins. Her male parent was away fighting in the first world war. Little Frances Griffiths loved playing by the stream with her older cousin, Elsie Wright, then sixteen. T

hey used to render habitation and tell their parents that they'd been 'playing with the fairies all day'. And so, i day Frances and Elsie went out playing in the garden, as usual, only this fourth dimension with Elsie's father's camera in tow.

What they returned with that day would shock and astonish the world for decades to come up. When they returned from the stream, they brought dorsum them a gear up of photographs, the likes of which had never been seen before.

Frances appeared in the snaps surrounded by what appeared to be fairies. Elsie's father dismissed the photo as nothing more than than a childish prank. The photos were forgotten and the girls carried on playing with the camera.

A couple of months later, the pair returned with yet another set up of photographs, this time the fairies were much more disarming than the previous ones. Whilst Elsie'south male parent maintained that the photos to were null more a foolish joke, her mother believed them to be existent.

The residue of the world hears of the Cottingley Fairies

By 1919, Elsie's mother had shown the photos to a number of fairy intrigue societies. It was around this time that the photos caught the attending of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What is most surprising near this story is that the fairies would nigh probable accept remained in obscurity had it not been for the writer of the Sherlock Holmes books.

A strong believer in spiritualism, he found the photos to be conclusive proof that fairies existed. He found the photos fascinating and published them within a high definition and widely circulated newspaper. What'south more than is that he added his stamp of blessing, claiming that he believed the photos to be genuine. The world remained intrigued well into the 1920s and for generations to come.

However, by the 1980s it was all over. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, 'the jig was upwards' by the terminate of the 1980s. During a rare interview with the magazine The Unexplained, Elsie and Frances admitted that the majority of the photos were fake.

They explained that they had created the photos using cardboard cutouts, hatpins and artistic angles. Whilst Elsie said that the fifth and final photo was faux, Frances ever insisted that information technology was existent…

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