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Moments in Photography That Led to Today
This photo isn’t amazing, but one of the reasons why I like it is because I captured a street scene of some majestic Roman architecture. Something rather amazing about this scene is that of all the people standing around listening to the musician, none of them is making a photo or filming him with their cell phones.
It’s a rare scene that maybe could have been from 20 years ago. And this makes me think of how with everyone having a camera with them all the time, it’s easy to overlook the major historic moments in photographic history. And I think that a result of everyone having a camera with them all the time is leading to a society that takes for granted what a photo can do for us.
I’ll explain this opinion throughout this post as I talk about the major historic moments in photography. The goal of this post is so that you, a photography student, can understand better why your camera operates in the way that it does.
Camera Obscura
The earliest version of a camera is called a camera obscura, which in Latin literally means dark room. It was literally a dark room that had a small hole in one of the walls. The light passing through the prism would allow the scene outside to be projected up-side-down on a wall in the dark room. For more information on the mechanics of the camera obscura,see A Lesson On The Camera Obscura.
The first camera obscura operated similar to a pinhole camera. It was first theorized in 400 B.C. by Mo Ti, a Chinese philosopher. Not long later in Greece, Aristotle is recorded to have used a pinhole camera to view a partial solar eclipse. It’s not until 1604 that wee see the term camera obscura used.
Then in 1685, Johann Zahn drew diagrams of the camera obscura in his popular bookOculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium. Soon after this we see the camera obscura become popular with Dutch painters that are able to make their paintings come to life.
For example, if you contrast the work of Johannes Vermeer to most earlier paintings, you’ll notice the use of light and perspective that make he work come…
