The Genius of Photography is a documentary film produced by BBC Four in 2015. It follows the history of photography, up to 170 years, and how it allows us to generate a reaction to that image which forms a feeling towards the medium.
What is camera obscurity?
Camera Obscura can also be referred to as’Pinhole image’. It is the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a wall/screen/surface is projected through a small hole in that screen as a reversed and inverted image (left to right and upside down) on a wall opposite to the opening of the hole. For the image to be clear the background has to be dark relative to the surrounding.
How daguerreotypes differ from Henry Fox Talbot’s photographic process?
Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist and photography pioneer. To try combat the struggle of lighting in photographs caused my light sensitivity of various chemicals, he experimented using paper coated with silver salts and shoe box sized cameras. His result was an image laterally reversed with a negative contrast in lighting. A French painter Daguerreotype used an alternative method where he fixed his images to a mirror plate and his photographs produced a once off images, similar to a Polaroid. It is a visually unique experience and rather than Talbot’s negatively contrast images the light operates differently. The grains of the image sit up on the surface of the mirror rather than penetrate the surface on paper which gives a more realistic encapsulation. A weakness of Daguerreotype was that you were unable to make reproductions unlike Henry Fox Talbots paper based creation.
What is Eadweard Muybridge best known for?
Eadweard Muybridge was an English-American photography pioneer who is known for his photographic study of motion, action and motion-picture projection. He revolutionized how images were understood as it gave life to a photograph. He was intrigued at the movement of horses and uses Stanford as a focal point to his study. He placed a row of 24 cameras with electric shutters as a horse trots by to encapsulate the movement and piece the motion together.
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