World Photography Day: World Photography Day is observed on August 19 every year.
Photography is a popular recreational and professional activity today. But it wasn't the same during the formational decades of photography. On World Photography Day 2021, what can be more important than knowing the rich history of photography? The methods for projecting and capturing images go a long way back into the past. Ancient Chinese and Greeks could have known the earliest methods to project an image on a screen with a pin-hole setup. In the 16th century, an Italian scientist modified the pin-hole “camera obscura” by using a lens instead of a hole to project the image. But this method couldn't permanently capture an image.
Heliography, Daguerreotype
In the 1820s, Frenchman Nicéphore Niepce used heliography to take the oldest surviving photograph, which is known as “View from the Window at Le Gras”.
Niepce's heliographic processes did not last but gave way to the first daguerreotype camera. A few years later, Louis Daguerre, a French artist, learnt from Mr Niepce's heliography and began to produce photographs on silvered copper plates through the process called daguerreotype. In 1839, its patent was sold to the French Government who made it free to the world.
Photogenic drawing and Calotype
Meanwhile, efforts were being made across the world to make light-sensitive paper that could produce a negative image and be chemically treated to produce photographs. William Henry Fox Talbot, an English chemist, linguist, archaeologist, and pioneer photographer, was known to experiment with this process. But daguerreotype continued to be the more popular option.
Wet collodion process and dry plates
The wet collodion process used a glass plate and increased the popularity of photography at once. The process was more economical and faster to capture one photo.
The dry plates were manufactured to substitute the earlier wet process. These plates began to be produced in factories and marked the beginning of modern photography.
Colour photography
Earlier, artists were hired to add colour to monochromatic daguerreotype and calotype images. Such hand-painted techniques remained popular until the early 20th century when the autochrome plates were introduced.
The digital era
Photography went through a massive change from analogue to digital during the transition to the 21st century. First digital consumer cameras made photography more popular. Photography continues to bloom in different genres now.