The History of the Photograph

In first actual photograph originated in the year 1825. Joseph Niepce, who was French, developed the first photograph. The first photographs were of a plate made of pewter, which in using some other materials could be used to print pictures with ink. As time progressed he was also responsible for improving on the process.

Many people who also toyed with photographs and the process of making them, added to the improvement of how a photograph was made. In the beginning, it wasn't actually called photograph but instead heliograph. The actual meaning of heliograph is sun drawing as it was a term coined by Niepce for the way he used to develop a picture.

The process of making a heliograph was a very long process and took all of eight hours to complete the exposure time. Niepce worked very hard to try and cut down the exposure time but, he was never able to shorten it and took up with a paiter in Paris by the name of Jacques-Mande Daguerre. Together, they worked trying to find an answer to how to shorten the time it took to make a photograph from start to finish, but Niepce died before they were able to find a way.

Daguerre was able to finally shorten the time it took to about half an hour. He was able to do this by using the studies he and Niepce produced when they had earlier on worked together. So, actually Daguerre could take the name of father of photography, but, Niepce has to be given cudo's for the first actual photograph.

Now, the word photograph actually is Greek derived and is taken from a few different words with different meanings. In the beginning of the photograph it often dealt with using toxic chemicals and could be quite expensive. As photographs were improved upon one after the other, things begin to become better and less expensive to produce them.

Imagine what it was like for people to be able to capture their likeness and the likeness of their loved ones in a permanent way. It has to have been a surreal experience to say the least. However, this new invention of taking photographs did not exactly catch on directly with the wealthy. The more elite social status of individuals still had their likeness captured by artist and portrait painters.

As time went by though, the photographs were exceedingly getting better all the while and monochrome images were starting to offer something that really no painter of portraits could. And since then photographs has only improved each time someone would try tweaking them or using altogether different methods. This is the way of any thing in the world from the beginning of time until present day. they were as we still do try to always improve upon something to make it better than it way before.

Much evidence points to a time of only about a decade that Daguerre was able to keep his dominant process of making photographs, until others started to shadow him using new and different processes. And this is the way it was and continues to be until the present day. Photographs and how to take them are still being researched and made better all the time, and it will probably continue on just as it always has.