Despite the abundance of photographers, often self-made, few can tell in detail about the history of photographs. This is exactly what we will do today. After reading the article, you will learn: what a camera obscura is, what material became the basis for the first photograph, and how instant photography appeared.
How did it all begin?
ABOUT chemical properties People have known sunlight for a very long time. Even in ancient times, anyone could say that the sun's rays make the skin color darker, they guessed the effect of light on the taste of beer and sparkling precious stones. History goes back more than a thousand years of observations of the behavior of certain objects under the influence of ultraviolet radiation (this type of radiation is characteristic of the sun).
The first analogue of photography began to be truly used back in the 10th century AD.
This application consisted of the so-called camera obscura. It is a completely dark room, one of the walls of which had a round hole allowing light to pass through. Thanks to him, a projection of an image appeared on the opposite wall, which the artists of that time “modified” and obtained beautiful drawings.
The image on the walls was upside down, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. This phenomenon was discovered by an Arab scientist from Basra named Algazen. He had been observing light rays for a long time, and the phenomenon of a camera obscura was first noticed by him on the darkened white wall of his tent. The scientist used it to observe the darkening of the sun: even then they understood that looking at the sun directly is very dangerous.
First photo: background and successful attempts.
The main premise is Johann Heinrich Schulz's proof in 1725 that it is light, not heat, that causes silver salt to turn dark. He did this by accident: trying to create a luminous substance, he mixed chalk with nitric acid and a small amount of dissolved silver. He noticed that under the influence of sunlight the white solution darkened.
This prompted the scientist to do another experiment: he tried to obtain an image of letters and numbers by cutting them out on paper and applying them to the illuminated side of the vessel. He received the image, but he didn’t even have any thoughts about saving it. Based on the work of Schultz, the scientist Grotthus established that the absorption and emission of light occurs under the influence of temperature.
Later, in 1822, the world's first image was obtained, more or less familiar to modern man. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce received it, but the frame he received was not properly preserved. Because of this, he continued to work with great diligence and received an 1826 full-length shot called “View from a Window.” It was he who went down in history as the first full-fledged photograph, although it was still far from the quality we are used to.
The use of metals is a significant simplification of the process.
A few years later, in 1839, another Frenchman, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, published new material for taking photographs: copper plates coated with silver. After this, the plate was doused with iodine vapor, which created a layer of photosensitive silver iodide. It was he who was key to future photography.
After processing, the layer was exposed for 30 minutes in a room illuminated by sunlight. Next, the plate was taken to a dark room and treated with mercury vapor, and the frame was fixed with table salt. It is Daguerre who is considered to be the creator of the first more or less high-quality photograph. Although this method was far from “mere mortals,” it was already significantly simpler than the first.
Color photography is a breakthrough of its time.
Many people think that color photography only appeared with the creation of film cameras. This is not true at all. The year of creation of the first color photograph is considered to be 1861, it was then that James Maxwell received the image, later called the “Tartan Ribbon”. To create it, we used the three-color photography method or the color separation method, whichever you prefer.
To obtain this frame, three cameras were used, each of which was equipped with a special filter that made up the primary colors: red, green and blue. As a result, we got three images that were combined into one, but such a process could not be called simple and fast. To simplify it, vigorous research was carried out on photosensitive materials.
The first step towards simplification was the identification of sensitizers. They were discovered by Hermann Vogel, a scientist from Germany. After some time, he managed to get a layer sensitive to green color spectrum. Later, his student Adolf Mithe created sensitizers that were sensitive to three primary colors: red, green and blue. He demonstrated his discovery in 1902 at the Berlin scientific conference along with the first color projector.
One of the first photochemist scientists in Russia, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, a student of Mite, developed a sensitizer more sensitive to the red-orange spectrum, which allowed him to surpass his teacher. He also managed to reduce the shutter speed, managed to make the photographs more widespread, that is, he created all the possibilities for reproducing photographs. Based on the inventions of these scientists, special photographic plates were created, which, despite their shortcomings, were extremely in demand among ordinary consumers.
Instant photography is another step towards speeding up the process.
In general, the year of appearance of this type of photography is considered to be 1923, when a patent for the creation of an “instant camera” was recorded. Such a device was of little use; the combination of a camera and a darkroom was extremely cumbersome and did not greatly reduce the time it took to obtain a frame. Understanding of the problem came a little later. It consisted in the inconvenience of the process of obtaining a finished negative.
It was in the 30s that complex light-sensitive elements first appeared, making it possible to obtain ready-made positive images. Their development was initially carried out by Agfa, and the guys from Polaroid started working on them en masse. The company's first cameras made it possible to receive instant photographs immediately after taking a frame.
A little later, similar ideas were tried to be implemented in the USSR. The photo sets “Moment” and “Photon” were created here, but they did not find popularity. The main reason is the lack of unique light-sensitive films for obtaining positive images. It was the principle laid down by these devices that became one of the key and most popular at the end of the 20th century. beginning of XXI century, especially in Europe.
Digital photography is a sharp leap in the development of the industry.
This type of photography really began quite recently - in 1981. The Japanese can safely be considered the founders: Sony showed the first device in which the matrix replaced photographic film. Everyone knows how a digital camera differs from a film camera, right? Yes, it could not be called a high-quality digital camera in the modern sense, but the first step was obvious.
Subsequently, many companies developed a similar concept, but the first digital device, as they are accustomed to seeing it, was created by Kodak. The camera began to be mass-produced in 1990, and it almost immediately became super popular.
In 1991, Kodak and Nikon released the Kodak DSC100 professional digital SLR camera based on the Nikon F3 camera. This device weighed 5 kilograms.
It is worth noting that with the advent of digital technologies, the scope of application of photography has become more extensive.
Modern cameras, as a rule, are divided into several categories: professional, amateur and mobile. In general, they differ from each other only in matrix size, optics and processing algorithms. Due to the small number of differences, the line between amateur and mobile cameras is gradually blurring.
Application of photography
Back in the middle of the last century, it was difficult to imagine that clear images in newspapers and magazines would become a mandatory attribute. The photography boom became especially pronounced with the advent of digital cameras. Yes, many will say that film cameras were better and more popular, but it was digital technology that made it possible to rid the photo industry of problems such as running out of film or overlapping frames.
Moreover, modern photography is going through extremely interesting changes. If earlier, for example, to get a passport photo you had to stand in a long line, take a photo and wait a few more days before printing it, but now it’s enough to just take a photo of yourself against a white background with certain requirements on your phone and print the photos on special paper.
Art photography has also made great strides forward. Previously, it was difficult to get a highly detailed shot of a mountain landscape; it was difficult to crop unnecessary elements or make high-quality photo processing. Now even mobile photographers, who are ready to compete with pocket digital cameras without any problems, are getting wonderful shots. Of course, smartphones cannot compete with full-fledged cameras such as the Canon 5D, but this is a topic for another discussion.
Digital SLR for a beginner 2.0- for NIKON connoisseurs.
My first MIRROR- for CANON connoisseurs.
So, dear reader, now you know a little more about the history of photography. I hope you find this material useful. If this is so, then why not subscribe to blog updates and tell your friends about it? Moreover, there is still a lot of interesting materials waiting for you that will allow you to become more literate in matters of photography. Good luck and thank you for your attention.
Sincerely yours, Timur Mustaev.
Just some 30-40 years ago, a significant part of photographs, films, and television programs were black and white. Many people have no idea that color photography appeared much earlier than it became widely used in life. This post is about the development of color photography.
In fact, attempts to obtain color photographs began in the mid-19th century, shortly after. But the inventors faced many technical difficulties. In addition to just getting a color photo, there were big problems with correct color reproduction. It was precisely because of various technical difficulties that the widespread introduction of color photography into life lasted for more than a hundred years. However, thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts, today we can see fairly high-quality color photographs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Tartan Ribbon” is considered to be the world's first color photograph. It was shown by the famous English physicist James Maxwell during a lecture on the characteristics of color vision at the Royal Institution in London on May 17, 1861.
However, Maxwell did not take photography seriously, and the pioneer of color photography was the Frenchman Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron. On November 23, 1868, he patented the first method of producing color photographs. The method was quite complicated and involved shooting the desired object three times through light filters, and the desired photograph was obtained after combining three plates of different colors.
Photographs of Louis Ducos du Hauron (1870s)
In 1878, Louis Ducos du Hauron presented his collection of color photographs at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.
In 1873, the German photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel made the discovery of sensitizers - substances that can increase the sensitivity of silver compounds to rays of different wavelengths. Then another German scientist, Adolf Mithe, developed sensitizers that made the photographic plate sensitive to different parts of the spectrum. He also designed a camera for three-color photography and a three-beam projector for displaying the resulting color photographs. This equipment was first demonstrated in action by Adolf Mithe in Berlin in 1902.
Photographs by Adolf Miethe (early 20th century)
The pioneer of color photography in Russia was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, who improved Adolf Miethe's method and achieved very high-quality color rendering. At the beginning of the 20th century, he traveled around the Russian Empire, taking many excellent color photographs (about two thousand of them have survived to this day).
Photos by Prokudin-Gorsky (Russia, early 20th century)
Still, getting one color image out of three was inconvenient; in order for color photography to become widespread, the method had to be simplified. This was done by the Lumiere brothers, the famous inventors of cinema. In 1907, they demonstrated their Autochrome method, which produced a color image on a glass plate.
Some of the "autochromes" (early 20th century)
Over the next 30 years, Autochrome became the primary color photography method for the masses until Kodak developed a more advanced color photography method.
Artistic photography or, as it was called at the dawn of its appearance, light painting is one of the youngest forms of art. Story artistic photography spans almost two centuries, which is relatively short in historical context. However, in such a short period of time, the art of photography has been able to transform from a complex skill, accessible only to a few, into one of the most widespread areas, without which modern life is unthinkable.
First photographic experiments
It must be said that the emergence of photography is closely related to the discovery of optical and chemical effects, which ultimately made it possible to make such an epoch-making discovery. The first of these was the creation of the so-called camera obscura - a primitive device capable of projecting an inverted image. In essence, it was a dark box with a small hole at one end, through which rays of light, refracting, “painted” an image on the opposite wall. The invention of the camera obscura was especially liked by artists, who placed a sheet of paper in the place where the image was projected and sketched it, covered with a dark cloth.
The camera obscura effect, it must be said, was discovered completely by accident. Most likely, people simply noticed that light falling from a thin crack or a round hole onto a dark wall “reveals” an inverted image of what is happening outside. As a matter of fact, the concept of “camera obscura” is translated from Latin as “dark room”.
However, the very fact of the discovery of this optical effect, which was made in ancient times, did not mean, of course, the invention of photography. After all, it’s not enough to project an image; it’s also important to capture it on a specific medium.
And here it is worth recalling the discovery of the phenomenon of photosensitivity of a number of materials. And one of the inventors of this effect was our compatriot, the famous political figure Count Alexei Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin.
Being an amateur chemist, he noticed that solutions of iron salts change their original color when exposed to light. Around the same time, in 1725, a physicist from the University of Halle, the German Johann Heinrich Schulze, while trying to create substances that glow in the dark, discovered that a mixture of chalk and nitric acid with a small amount of dissolved silver it darkens when exposed to light. In this case, the solution in the dark does not change its original characteristics at all.
After this observation, Schulze conducted several experiments where he placed various paper figures on a bottle of solution. The result was a photographic imprint of the image, which disappeared when light hit the surface or when the solution was stirred. The researcher himself did not attach due importance to his experience, but after it, many scientists continued to observe materials that had the photoelectric effect, which, in fact, led a century later to the invention of photography.
History of black and white photography
As many people probably know, the first photograph was taken by the French experimenter Joseph Nicéphore Niepce back in 1822. Joseph had aristocratic roots from birth and came from rich family. The father of the future “father of photography” served as an adviser to King Louis XV, and his mother was the daughter of a very wealthy lawyer. It goes without saying that in his youth Joseph received an excellent education, studying at the most prestigious colleges in France.
Initially, the parents prepared their son for activities in the church sphere, but young Niepce chose a different direction, becoming an officer of the revolutionary rebel forces. During the hostilities, Joseph Niepce significantly weakened his health and resigned, after which in 1795 he married the young beauty Agnes Rameru and began to live in Nice, working as a full-time civil servant.
It must be said that the young man has been interested in physics and chemistry since childhood, and therefore six years later he returns to his hometown, where, together with his older brother Claude, he begins to work in the field of inventive activity. Since 1816, Niépce began to make attempts to find a way that would allow the image produced in a camera obscura to be fixed on a physical medium.
Already the first experiments with silver salt, which changes color under the influence of sunlight, showed the main technical difficulty of creating the first photograph. Niépce succeeded in producing a negative image, but when removing the salt-coated plate from the camera obscura, it became clear that the image had completely disappeared. After these unsuccessful attempts, Joseph decided to secure the resulting image at all costs.
In his further experiments, Niépce decided to move away from the use of silver salt and pay attention to natural asphalt, which also changed its original properties under the influence of solar radiation. The disadvantage of this solution was the extremely low photosensitivity of copper or limestone plates coated with this substance. These experiments turned out to be successful, and after etching the asphalt with acid, the image on the plate was preserved.
It is believed that Joseph Niepce made the first successful attempt at capturing a photographic image in 1822, photographing a set table in his room. Unfortunately, the very first photo in the world has not survived to our time, and only the later photograph “View from the Window” has survived, which is rightfully considered the most famous photograph in the world. It was made in 1826, and it took eight long hours to exhibit it.
This photograph, in its essence, was the first negative image, and at the same time it was in relief. The latter effect was achieved by etching an asphalt-covered plate. The advantage of the method was the ability to create a large number of similar images, but the disadvantage was obvious - such a long shutter speed made it suitable only for shooting static scenes, but was completely unsuitable even for portrait photography. Nevertheless, Niepce's experiments proved to the world that capturing images in a camera obscura is possible and gave impetus to the research of other scientists who opened the world of traditional photography for us.
Thus, already in 1839, another researcher, Jacques Daguerre, announced a new method of obtaining a photographic image on a silver-plated copper or all-silver plate. Daguerre's technology involved coating such a photographic plate with silver iodide, a photosensitive layer that formed on it when processed with iodine vapor. Daguerre managed to fix the image using mercury vapor and table salt.
The technology, which later became known as daguerreotype, turned out to be much more advanced than Niepce’s method of obtaining photographic images. In particular, the exposure of the plate required much less time (from 15 to 30 minutes), and the quality of the image was much higher. In addition, daguerreotype made it possible to obtain a positive image, which was also a significant advance in comparison with the negative image obtained by Niépce. For many decades, daguerreotype was practically the only method used in real life way of photographing.
It must be said that at the same time in England, William Henry Fox Talbot created another method of obtaining photographic images, which he called calotype. The photosensitive element in Talbot's camera obscura was paper treated with silver chloride. The technology provided good image quality and was suitable for copying, unlike Dagger records. Exposure of the paper required an exposure time of one hour. Additionally, in 1833, an artist named Hercule Florence also announced his own method of producing photographic images using silver nitrate. However, in those years this method did not become widespread, but later a similar technique formed the basis for the creation of glass plates and films, which became the defining image medium for photography for many decades.
By the way, the world owes the appearance of the term “photography” to astronomers John Herschel and Johann von Mädler, who first introduced it into use in 1839.
History of color photography
As you know, Niépce’s first photograph, as well as all subsequent images obtained, were exclusively monochrome or, as we used to say, black and white. However, few people know that already in the middle of the 19th century, attempts were made to obtain a color image. It was these experiences that gave impetus to the history of development in the world of color photography.
The first successfully created and fixed color photograph can be considered the image obtained in 1861 by researcher James Maxwell. True, the technology for obtaining such a photograph turned out to be extremely complex: the image was taken with three cameras at once, on which three filters (one for each) of red, green and blue were mounted. When projecting this image, it was possible to convey the colors of the surrounding reality. However, this technique was clearly not suitable for widespread use.
The discovery of sensitizers - substances that increase the sensitivity of silver compounds to light rays of various lengths - made it possible to bring color photography closer to practical implementation. For the first time, sensitizers were obtained by photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, who developed a composition that was sensitive to the effects of waves in the green part of the light spectrum.
The discovery of this physical phenomenon made it possible to realize the practical implementation of color photography, the founder of which was Vogel’s student Adolf Mitte. He created several types of sensitizers that made the photographic plate sensitive across the entire light spectrum, and developed the first version of a camera capable of generating a color image. Such a photograph could be printed using the printing method and also displayed using a special projector with three beams of different colors.
It must be said that a huge role in the development of Mitte technology and, most importantly, in its practical implementation belongs to the Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who improved the method, created his own sensitizer and produced several thousand color photographs of the most remote corners Russian Empire. The operation of Prokudin-Gorsky's camera was based on the principle of color separation, which today is the basis for the operation of any printing equipment, as well as digital camera matrices. However, the works of Prokudin-Gorsky are so interesting that we decided to consider the features of their creation in a separate ARTICLE.
It must be said that color separation technology was far from the only one used to create color images. Thus, in 1907, the “fathers of cinema,” the Lumière brothers, presented their own method of producing color images using special photographic plates, which they called “Autochrome.” The Lumiere method had many disadvantages, inferior in quality to the technology of Prokudin-Gorsky and, in fact, Mitte, but it was simpler and more accessible. At the same time, the colors in the photo themselves were not very durable; the image was saved exclusively on plates, and the frame itself turned out to be quite grainy. However, it was the Lumiere technology that turned out to be the most “tenacious”, existing until 1935, when Kodak introduced a method for producing color photographs called Kodachrome. At the same time, Agfacolor technology was introduced three years earlier. The next important milestone in the development of color photography was the presentation of the “instant photo” system from Polaroid in 1963, and then the emergence of the first digital image capture technologies.
History of digital photography
The emergence of digital photography is largely associated with the development of space programs and the “arms race” between the United States and Soviet Union. It was then that the first techniques for capturing a digital image and transmitting it over a distance were developed. It goes without saying that the development of technology made it possible to subsequently bring it to the commercial market.
It must be said that the first digital cameras used in spacecraft did not provide for displaying images on physical media. The same drawback was inherent in the first digital cameras introduced by Texas Instruments in 1972, as well as the first digital camera, Mavica, which appeared a little later, developed by the Japanese company Sony. However, this drawback was eliminated quite quickly, and subsequent versions of Mavika could be connected to a color printer to print images.
The undoubted success allowed the Sony company to be the first to establish commercial production of digital cameras in various versions under the general name Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera). In essence, this camera was a video camera capable of operating in freeze-frame mode and capable of creating a photographic image with a dimension of 570x490 pixels, which was recorded by a CCD-based sensor. Later versions of the camera made it possible to immediately record the resulting photographs onto floppy disks, which could be immediately used on a PC.
It must be said that it was the appearance of these cameras that created an unprecedented sensation. Judge for yourself - it was not required to obtain a photographic image special knowledge, working with reagents, using laboratories. The picture was taken instantly and could be immediately viewed on a PC screen, which by that time was gaining more and more popularity. The only downside of this approach was the extremely low quality of the resulting “picture”, compared to film.
A significant leap forward in the history of digital photography was its entry into the professional segment of the market. First of all, the advantages of digital photography became clear to reporters who needed to quickly transfer the results of the shooting to the publishing house. At the same time, the quality of digital photography would be quite satisfactory for most newspapers. Exactly for this target audience Kodak introduced in 1992 the first professional-class camera with the DCS 100 index, which was built on the basis of the popular reportage “DSLR” of those years, Nikon F3. It should be said that the device, together with the storage disk, turned out to be very bulky (the camera together with the external unit weighed about five kilograms), and its cost was close to 25 thousand dollars, despite the fact that the quality of the photographs was only sufficient for newspaper printing. Despite this, reporters quickly realized the benefits of fast image transmission and processing.
A couple of years later, the first models of cameras “for everyone” appeared on the market, including the development of Apple - the QuickTake 100 digital camera. Its price of $749 indicated that new technology may be quite accessible to the average consumer. After this, the rapid development of computer and network technologies contributed to further refinement of the technology, which ultimately led to the almost complete displacement of film from most genres of photography, including the professional sphere. This became possible as a result of the advent of cameras with large sensor sizes, including 35 mm models, as well as medium format digital cameras based on high-quality matrices. As a result, the quality of digital photography has reached a qualitatively new level.
There are many iconic photographs in history that were taken by chance. Amazing story coincidences also contributed to the appearance of the first color photograph. "Tartan Ribbon" or "Tartan Ribbon" is a multi-colored image taken by physicist James Clerk Maxwell and photographer Thomas Sutton - blue, green and red - and demonstrated during a lecture on color vision at the Royal Institution of London on May 17, 1861.
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Publishing house "Science"
Moscow, 1968
James Maxwell is known for his work in the field of electromagnetic theory, but the scientist was also interested in color theory. In particular, he supported Thomas Young's idea of three primary colors and their connection with physiological processes in the human body. A joint experiment between Maxwell and the inventor-photographer Thomas Sutton was supposed to strengthen these assumptions.
Scientists sequentially photographed a knotted ribbon of Scottish fabric with a traditional checkered (tartan) pattern through multi-colored filters. By then illuminating the negatives through the same filters, it was possible to obtain a full-color projection of the image. As was shown almost a hundred years later by employees of the Kodak company, who recreated the conditions of Maxwell’s experiment, the available photographic materials did not allow demonstrating color photography and, in particular, obtaining red and green images.
R.M. Evans, who conducted this experiment, explained the appearance of colors in the Sutton-Maxwell photograph as follows: “It is clear that our film, like Sutton's, is sensitive only to extreme blue and ultraviolet. The fact that the images were obtained not only with blue, but also with green and red filters indicates that all solutions transmit light with wavelengths shorter than 430 µm (micrometers). In other words, the only radiation affecting the emulsion was light from the extreme blue end of the visible spectrum and even shorter invisible radiation in the ultraviolet. Our lens, which is similar in many ways to Sutton's, transmitted ultraviolet light up to 325 µm. The wavelengths transmitted by the lens and the three solutions (diluted) are shown in the spectrographic curves.
It's immediately clear that the three filters quite clearly divide the blue and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum into three separate regions, although the green is contained within the blue. Quite by chance, it turned out that the filters Sutton chose to separate the visible spectrum acted similarly in a relatively narrow region of light at short wavelengths. When looking at these curves, remember that with the green filter the exposure was 120 times greater, and with the green filter it was 80 times greater than with the blue filter. These coefficients were not taken into account when constructing the curves.
It can now be understood how blue was separated from other colors and how true green can be separated from blue. But it would immediately seem that everything painted red is completely indistinguishable. It turns out that many paints reflect not only the light we see as red, but also a lot of ultraviolet light. Therefore, a red object can give a clear image on a “red” plate not because it is red, but because it is more ultraviolet than those objects that we perceive as green and blue. We do not know, of course, what red color the ribbon photographed by Sutton was painted in. Moreover, there is no description of its color at all, which means we cannot be sure that the sections of the tape that Sutton turned out to be brighter on the red plate were truly red and not some other color with high ultraviolet reflectivity. It seems incredible, however, that Maxwell would have shown the photograph if the red spots were not in place. If so, then they were created by ultraviolet - red coloring of the tape - a happy accident that neither Maxwell nor Sutton could have foreseen."
Almost 200 years ago, Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niepce smeared a thin layer of asphalt on a metal plate and exposed it to the sun in a camera obscura. This is how he received the world's first “reflection of the visible.” The photo didn't turn out great best quality, but this is where the history of photography begins.
Just some 30-40 years ago, a significant part of photographs, films, and television programs were black and white. Many people have no idea that color photography appeared much earlier than we think. On May 17, 1861, the famous English physicist James Maxwell, during a lecture on the peculiarities of color vision at the Royal Institution in London, showed the world's first color photograph - “A Tartan Ribbon”.
Since then, photography, in addition to turning from black and white to color, has received many more varieties: aerial and space photography, photomontage and x-rays, self-portraiture, underwater photography and 3D photography have appeared.
1826 - first and oldest photograph
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French photographer, took this photo using an eight-hour shutter speed. It's called "View from the window on Le Gras" last years was shown at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
1838 - first photograph of another person
Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of another person in 1838. The photo of Boulevard du Temple shows a busy street that appears deserted (shutter speed 10 minutes, so there is no movement), except for one person in the lower left of the photo (visible when zoomed in).
1858 - first photomontage
In 1858, Henry Peach Robinson performed the first photomontage, combining several negatives into a single image.
The first and most famous composite photograph was called Fading Away - it consists of five negatives. The death of a girl from tuberculosis is depicted. The work caused a lot of controversy.
1861 - first color photograph
James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist, took the first color photograph in 1861. The photographic plates used in the process are now kept in the house where Maxwell was born (now a museum), at 14 India Street in Edinburgh.
1875 - first self-portrait
The famous American photographer Matthew Brady was the first person to photograph himself, i.e. took a self-portrait.
The first aerial photographers were birds. In 1903, Julius Neubronner connected a camera and a timer and attached it to the neck of a pigeon. This invention was noted in German army and used for military intelligence.
The first underwater color photograph was taken in the Gulf of Mexico by Dr. William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin in 1926.
On October 24, 1946, a 35mm camera mounted on a V-2 rocket took a photo from 105 km above the Earth.
The first photograph to show a fully illuminated Earth is known as The Blue Marble. The photo was taken on December 7, 1972 by the team spaceship"Apollo 17".
