One Of The a best Female Photographers

In this blog, I thought of concentrating on the amazing female talent. She is possibly the most definitive photographers to have ever lived and she is famous for her black and white portraits.
Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.

Born in Lexington, Virginia, Mann was the third of three children and the only daughter. Her father, Robert S. Munger, was a general practitioner, and her mother, Elizabeth Evans Munger, ran the bookstore at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Mann was raised by an atheist and compassionate father who allowed Mann to be "benignly neglected."Mann graduated from The Putney School in 1969, and attended Bennington College and Friends World College. She earned a B.A., summa cum laude, from Hollins College (now Hollins University) in 1974 and a MA in creative writing in 1975. She took up photography at Putney, where, she claims, her motive was to be alone in the darkroom with her boyfriend.She made her photographic debut at Putney, with an image of a nude classmate. Her father encouraged her interest in photography; his 5x7 camera became the basis of her use of large format cameras today. She has "never" read about photography.

After graduation, Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University. In the mid-1970s she photographed the construction of its new law school building, the Lewis Hall (now the Sydney Lewis Hall), leading to her first one-woman exhibition in late 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Those surrealistic images were subsequently included as part of her first book, Second Sight, published in 1984. While Mann explored a variety of genres as she was maturing in the 1970s, she truly found her trade with her second publication, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (Aperture, 1988).

Her second collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, published in 1988, stimulated minor controversy. The images “captured the confusing emotions and developing identities of adolescent girls [and the] expressive printing style lent a dramatic and brooding mood to all of her images.”In the preface to the book, Ann Beattie says “when a girl is twelve years old, she often wants – or says she wants – less involvement with adults. […] [it is] a time in which the girls yearn for freedom and adults feel their own grip on things becoming a little tenuous, as they realize that they have to let their children go.” Beattie says that Mann’s photographs don’t “glamorize the world, but they don’t make it into something more unpleasant than it is, either.” The girls photographed in this series are shown “vulnerable in their youthfulness” but Mann instead focuses on the strength that the girls possess.

In an image from the book, Mann says that the young girl was extremely reluctant to stand closer to her mother’s boyfriend. Mann said that she thought it was strange because “it was their peculiar familiarity that had provoked this photograph in the first place.” Mann didn’t want to crop out the girl’s elbow but the girl refused to move in closer. According to Mann, the girl’s mother shot her boyfriend in the face with a .22 several months later. In court the mother “testified that while she worked nights at a local truck stop he was ‘at home partying and harassing my daughter.’ Mann said “the child put it to me somewhat more directly.” Mann says that she now looks at this photograph with “a jaggy chill of realization.”

Many of her other photographs containing her nude or hurt children caused controversy. For example, in "The Perfect Tomato," (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/83/%22The_Perfect_Tomato%22_by_Sally_Mann_%281990%29_%28correct_image%29.jpg)  the viewer sees a nude Jessie, posing on a picnic table outside, bathed in light. Jessie told Steven Cantor during the filming of one of his movies that she had just been playing around and her mother told her to freeze, and she tried to capture the image in a rush because the sun was setting. This explains why everything is blurred except for the tomato, hence the photograph's title. This image was likely criticized for Jessie’s nudity and presentation of the adolescent female form. While Jessie was aware of this  photograph, Dana Cox, in her essay, said that the Mann children were probably unaware of the other photographs being taken as Mann’s children were often naked because “it came natural to them.”This habit of nudity is a family thing because Mann says she used to walk around her house naked when she was growing up. Cox states that “the own artist’s childhood is reflected in the way she captures moments in her children’s lives.” One image that deals more with another aspect of childhood besides "naked play", Jessie's Cut, shows Jessie's head, wrapped in what appears to be plastic, with blood running down the side of her face from the cut above her left eye. The cut is stitched and the blood is dry and stains her skin. As painful as the image looks, there are a great number of viewers who could relate to Jessie when they think about the broken bones and stitched up cuts they had during childhood.

When Time magazine named her “America’s Best Photographer” in 2001, it wrote:

"Mann recorded a combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly — sometimes unnervingly — imaginative play. What the outraged critics of her child nudes failed to grant was the patent devotion involved throughout the project and the delighted complicity of her son and daughters in so many of the solemn or playful events. No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care."

Mann received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Corcoran Museum in May 2006. The Royal Photographic Society (UK) awarded her an Honorary Fellowship in 2012.

Mann won the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for Hold Still: A Memoir in Photographs.

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Possibly the best photographer to walk the face of the earth

This is a story about Ansel Easton Adams. possibly the best photographer ever. Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and an environmentalist. he is famously known for his blak and white landscape photographs of the american west, especially Yosemite national park have been widely reproduced on calenders, posters and books. with Fred Archer, Ansel Easton Adams developed the Zone system as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. the resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs. Ansel Easton Adams primarily used large format cameras because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his image.
Ansel Easton Adams founded the photography group known as group f/64 along with photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston.

Ansel Easton Adams was born in the western addition of San Francisco, California, to Charles Hitchcock and Olive Bray Adams. An only child, he was named after his uncle Ansel Easton. his mother's family came from Baltimore. The Adams family came from new England. his parental grandfather founded and built a prosperous lumbar business, which his father later ran, through his father's natural talents lay more with sciences than with business. later is life, Adams would condemn that very dame industry for cutting down many of the great redwood forests.

In 1903, his family moved 2 miles west to a new home near the seacliff neighbourhood, just south of the presido army base. the home had a splendid view of the golden gate and the marine headlands. San Francisco was devastated by the april 18, 1906 earth quake. uninjured in the initial shaking, the four year old Ansel Easton Adams was tossed face first `into a garden wall during an aftershock three hours later, breaking and scarring his nose. Among his earliest memories was watching the smoke from the ensuring fire that destroyed much of the city a few miles to the east. although a doctor recommended that his nose be reset once he reached maturity, Ansel Easton Adams's nose remained crooked his entire life.
Ansel Easton Adams was a hyperactive child and prone to frequent sickness and hypochondria. he had a few friends, but his family home and surroundings on the heights facing the golden gate provided ample childhood activities. although he had no patience for games or sports, the curious child took to the beauty of the nature at an early age, collecting bugs and exploring lobos creek and all the way to baker beach and the sea cliffs leading to lands end.

His father bought a three inch telescope and they enthusiastically shared the hobby of amateur astronomy, visiting the lick observatory on mount hamilton together. his father went on to serve as the paid secretary-treasurer of the astronomical society of the pacific from 1925 to 1950.

After the death of Ansel's grandfather and the aftermath of the panic of 1907, his father;s business suffered great financial losses, some of the induced near-poverty was because Ansel's uncle Ansel Easton and Cedric Wright's father, George Wright, had secretly sold their shares of the company to the hawaiian sugar trust for a large amount of money. by 1912, the family's standard of living dropped sharply. after young Ansel was dismissed from several private school for his restlessness adn inattentiveness, his father decided to pull him out of school in 1915, at the age of 12. Adams was then educated by private tutors, his aunt Mary, and by his father. his aunt was a follower of Robert G Ingersoll, a 19th century agnostic, abolitionist and women's suffrage advocate. as a result of his aunt's influence, Robert's teachings were important to Ansel's upbringing. 

His father raised him to follow the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson. "to live a modest, mortal life guided by a social responsibility to man and to nature." Adams had a warm adn supportive relationship with his father, but had a distant relationship with his mother, who did not approve of his interest in photography. the day after his mother's death on 1950, Ansel had a dispute with the undertaker when choosing which casket his mother would be buried in, Ansel chose the cheapest in the room, a $260 casket that seemed the least he could purchase without doing the job himself. when the undertaker remarked, "have you no respect for the dead?" Adams replied, "one more crack like that and i will take mama elsewhere."

Adams became interested in piano at the age 12. Music became the main focus of his youth. his father sent him to a piano teacher MArie Butler, who focused on perfectionism and accuracy. after four years of studying under her guidance, adams moved on to other teachers, one being composer Henry Cowell. for the next twelve years, the piano was Adam's primary occupation and by 1920, his intended profession. although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano bought substance, discipline and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. moreover the careful training and exact craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography.

Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. He wrote of his first view of the valley: "the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious... One wonder after another descended upon us... There was light everywhere... A new era began for me." His father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera, during that stay and he took his first photographs with his "usual hyperactive enthusiasm".He returned to Yosemite on his own the following year with better cameras and a tripod. In the winter, he learned basic darkroomtechnique working part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher.Adams avidly read photography magazines, attended camera club meetings, and went to photography and art exhibits. With retired geologist and amateur ornithologist Francis Holman, whom he called "Uncle Frank," he explored the High Sierra, in summer and winter, developing the stamina and skill needed to photograph at high elevation and under difficult weather conditions

In 1927, Adams produced his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, in his new style, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, taken with his Korona view camera using glass plates and a dark red filter (to heighten the tonal contrasts). On that excursion, he had only one plate left and he "visualized" the effect of the blackened sky before risking the last shot. He later said "I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print". In April 1927, he wrote "My photographs have now reached a stage when they are worthy of the world's critical examination. I have suddenly come upon a new style which I believe will place my work equal to anything of its kind."

With the sponsorship and promotion of Albert Bender, an arts-connected businessman, Adams's first portfolio was a success (earning nearly $3,900) and soon he received commercial assignments to photograph the wealthy patrons who bought his portfolio. Adams also came to understand how important it was that his carefully crafted photos were reproduced to best effect. At Bender's invitation, he joined the Roxburghe Club, an association devoted to fine printing and high standards in book arts. He learned much about printing techniques, inks, design, and layout which he later applied to other projects.Unfortunately, at that time most of his darkroom work was still being done in the basement of his parents' home, and he was limited by barely adequate equipment.

Romantic landscape artists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moranportrayed the Grand Canyon and Yosemite at the end of their reign, and were subsequently displaced by daredevil photographers Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and George Fiske.But it was Adams's black-and-white photographs of the West which became the foremost record of what many of the National Parks were like before tourism, and his persistent advocacy helped expand the National Park system. He used his works to promote many of the goals of the Sierra Club and of the nascent environmental movement, but always insisted that, as far as his photographs were concerned, "beauty comes first". His images are still very popular in calendars, posters, and books.

Realistic about development and the subsequent loss of habitat, Adams advocated for balanced growth, but was pained by the ravages of "progress". He stated, "We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere."

Adams co-founded Group f/64 with other masters like Edward Weston,Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham. With Fred Archer, he pioneered the Zone System, a technique for translating perceived light into specific densities on negatives and paper, giving photographers better control over finished photographs. Adams also advocated the idea of visualization (which he often called "previsualization", though he later acknowledged that term to be a redundancy) whereby the final image is "seen" in the mind's eye before the photo is taken, toward the goal of achieving all together the aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, and mechanical effects desired. He taught these and other techniques to thousands of amateur photographers through his publications and his workshops. His many books about photography, including the Morgan & Morgan Basic Photo Series (The Camera, The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, and Artificial Light Photography) have become classics in the field.

In 1966 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Adams's photograph The Tetons and the Snake River was one of the 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization.

His legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. He told his students, "It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium."

Adams died on April 22, 1984, in the ICU at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at the age of 82 fromcardiovascular disease. He was survived by his wife, two children, Michael and Anne, and five grandchildren.

Publishing rights for most of Adams's photographs are now handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. An archive of Ansel Adams's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography(CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Numerous works by the artist have been sold at auction, including a mural size print of 'CLEARING WINTER STORM, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK' which sold at Sotheby's New York in 2010 for $722,500, the highest price ever paid for an original Ansel Adams photograph.

John Szarkowski states in the introduction to Ansel Adams: Classic Images (1985, p. 5), "The love that Americans poured out for the work and person of Ansel Adams during his old age, and that they have continued to express with undiminished enthusiasm since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country's response to a visual artist."

                                Source: Wikipedia

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What is photography really about

Photography is the science, art and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

 “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

—Aaron Siskind

“Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

—Elliott Erwitt

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a cameraduring a timed exposure. With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisiblelatent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

Photography is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography) and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.

“Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.”

—Jacques-Henri Lartigue

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

—Diane Arbus

“Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.”

—Steven Pinker

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”

—Dorothea Lange

The word "photography" was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".

Several people may have coined the same new term from these roots independently. Hercules Florence, a French painter and inventor living in Campinas, Brazil, used the French form of the word, photographie, in private notes which a Brazilian photography historian believes were written in 1834. Johann von Maedler, a Berlin astronomer, is credited in a 1932 German history of photography as having used it in an article published on 25 February 1839 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung.Both of these claims are now widely reported but apparently neither has ever been independently confirmed as beyond reasonable doubt. Credit has traditionally been given to Sir John Herschel both for coining the word and for introducing it to the public. His uses of it in private correspondence prior to 25 February 1839 and at his Royal Society lecture on the subject in London on 14 March 1839 have long been amply documented and accepted as settled facts.

“Photography is a way to shape human perception.”

—James Balog

“Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.”

—Martin Parr

“Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo. So it’s good to capture people when they are themselves.”

—Patrick Demarchelier

“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”

—Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”

—Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.”

—Ansel Adams

Around the year 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura by means of a light-sensitive substance. He used paper or white leather treated with silver nitrate. Although he succeeded in capturing the shadows of objects placed on the surface in direct sunlight, and even made shadow-copies of paintings on glass, it was reported in 1802 that "the images formed by means of a camera obscura have been found too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver." The shadow images eventually darkened all over.

The first permanent photoetching was an image produced in 1822 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed in a later attempt to make prints from it. Niépce was successful again in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he made the View from the Window at Le Gras, the earliest surviving photograph from nature (i.e., of the image of a real-world scene, as formed in a camera obscura by alens).

“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.”

—Garry Winogrand

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”

—Jean-Luc Godard

“Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.”

—Elliott Erwitt

“Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.”

—W. Eugene Smith

“Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”

—Alfred Stieglitz

Because Niépce's camera photographs required an extremely long exposure (at least eight hours and probably several days), he sought to greatly improve his bitumen process or replace it with one that was more practical. In partnership with Louis Daguerre, he worked out post-exposure processing methods that produced visually superior results and replaced the bitumen with a more light-sensitive resin, but hours of exposure in the camera were still required. With an eye to eventual commercial exploitation, the partners opted for total secrecy.

Niépce died in 1833 and Daguerre then redirected the experiments toward the light-sensitive silver halides, which Niépce had abandoned many years earlier because of his inability to make the images he captured with them light-fast and permanent. Daguerre's efforts culminated in what would later be named the daguerreotype process, the essential elements of which were in place in 1837. The required exposure time was measured in minutes instead of hours. Daguerre took the earliest confirmed photograph of a person in 1838 while capturing a view of a Paris street: unlike the other pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic on the busy boulevard, which appears deserted, one man having his boots polished stood sufficiently still throughout the approximately ten-minute-long exposure to be visible. The existence of Daguerre's process was publicly announced, without details, on 7 January 1839. The news created an international sensation. France soon agreed to pay Daguerre a pension in exchange for the right to present his invention to the world as the gift of France, which occurred when complete working instructions were unveiled on 19 August 1839.

“Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.”

—Andy Goldsworthy

“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.”

—Edward Steichen

Meanwhile, in Brazil, Hercules Florence had apparently started working out a silver-salt-based paper process in 1832, later naming itPhotographie, and an English inventor, William Fox Talbot, succeeded in making crude but reasonably light-fast silver images on paper as early as 1834 but had kept his work secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention in January 1839, Talbot published his method and set about improving on it. At first, like other pre-daguerreotype processes, Talbot's paper-based photography typically required hours-long exposures in the camera, but in 1840 he created the calotype process, with exposures comparable to the daguerreotype. In both its original and calotype forms, Talbot's process, unlike Daguerre's, created a translucent negative which could be used to print multiple positive copies, the basis of most chemical photography up to the present day. Daguerreotypes could only be replicated by rephotographing them with a camera. Talbot's famous tiny paper negative of the Oriel window in Lacock Abbey, one of a number of camera photographs he made in the summer of 1835, may be the oldest camera negative in existence.

John Herschel made many contributions to the new field. He invented the cyanotype process, later familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive". He had discovered in 1819 that sodium thiosulphate was a solvent of silver halides, and in 1839 he informed Talbot (and, indirectly, Daguerre) that it could be used to "fix" silver-halide-based photographs and make them completely light-fast. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.

In the March 1851 issue of The Chemist, Frederick Scott Archer published his wet plate collodion process. It became the most widely used photographic medium until the gelatin dry plate, introduced in the 1870s, eventually replaced it. There are three subsets to the collodion process; the Ambrotype (a positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (a positive image on metal) and the glass negative, which was used to make positive prints on albumen or salted paper.

Many advances in photographic glass plates and printing were made during the rest of the 19th century. In 1891, Gabriel Lippmann introduced a process for making natural-color photographs based on the optical phenomenon of the interference of light waves. His scientifically elegant and important but ultimately impractical invention earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1908.

Glass plates were the medium for most original camera photography from the late 1850s until the general introduction of flexible plastic films during the 1890s. Although the convenience of film greatly popularized amateur photography, early films were somewhat more expensive and of markedly lower optical quality than their glass plate equivalents, and until the late 1910s they were not available in the large formats preferred by most professional photographers, so the new medium did not immediately or completely replace the old. Because of the superior dimensional stability of glass, the use of plates for some scientific applications, such as astrophotography, continued into the 1990s, and in the niche field of laser holography it has persisted into the 2010s.

“Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It’s the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style.”

—Chuck Close

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Evolution of Cameras

The history of the camera can be traced much further back than the introduction of photography. Cameras evolved from thecamera obscura, and continued to change through many generations of photographic technology, including daguerreotypes,calotypes, dry plates, film, and digital cameras. 

Camera obscura 

Photographic cameras were a development of the camera obscura, a device possibly dating back to the ancient Chinese and ancient Greeks which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene outside upside-down onto a viewing surface.

An Arab physicist, Ibn al-Haytham, published his Book of Optics in 1021 AD. He created the first pinhole camera after observing how light traveled through a window shutter. Ibn al-Haytham realized that smaller holes would create sharper images. Ibn al-Haytham is also credited with inventing the first camera obscura.

On 24 January 1544 mathematician and instrument maker Reiners Gemma Frisius of Leuven University used one to watch a solar eclipse, publishing a diagram of his method in De Radio Astronimica et Geometrico in the following year. In 1558 Giovanni Batista della Porta was the first to recommend the method as an aid to drawing.

Before the invention of photographic processes there was no way to preserve the images produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing them. The earliest cameras were room-sized, with space for one or more people inside; these gradually evolved into more and more compact models such as that by Niépce's time portable handheld cameras suitable for photography were readily available. The first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography was envisioned by Johann Zahn in 1685, though it would be almost 150 years before such an application was possible.

Early fixed images 

The first partially successful photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light. No means of removing the remaining unaffected silver chloride was known to Niépce, so the photograph was not permanent, eventually becoming entirely darkened by the overall exposure to light necessary for viewing it. In the mid-1820s, Niépce used a sliding wooden box camera made by Parisian opticians Charles and Vincent Chevalier to experiment with photography on surfaces thinly coated with Bitumen of Judea. The bitumen slowly hardened in the brightest areas of the image. The unhardened bitumen was then dissolved away. One of those photographs has survived. 

Daguerrotypes and Calotypes

After Niépce's death in 1833, his partner Louis Daguerre continued to experiment and by 1837 had created the first practical photographic process, which he named the daguerreotype and publicly unveiled in 1839. Daguerre treated a silver-plated sheet of copper with iodine vapor to give it a coating of light-sensitive silver iodide. After exposure in the camera, the image was developed by mercury vapor and fixed with a strong solution of ordinary salt (sodium chloride). Henry Fox Talbot perfected a different process, the calotype, in 1840. As commercialized, both processes used very simple cameras consisting of two nested boxes. The rear box had a removable ground glass screen and could slide in and out to adjust the focus. After focusing, the ground glass was replaced with a light-tight holder containing the sensitized plate or paper and the lens was capped. Then the photographer opened the front cover of the holder, uncapped the lens, and counted off as many seconds—or minutes—as the lighting conditions seemed to require before replacing the cap and closing the holder. Despite this mechanical simplicity, high-quality achromatic lenses were standard.

Kodak and the birth of film

The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the "Kodak," was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding cameras.

In 1900, Eastman took mass-market photography one step further with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

Film also allowed the movie camera to develop from an expensive toy to a practical commercial tool.

Despite the advances in low-cost photography made possible by Eastman, plate cameras still offered higher-quality prints and remained popular well into the 20th century. To compete with roll film cameras, which offered a larger number of exposures per loading, many inexpensive plate cameras from this era were equipped with magazines to hold several plates at once. Special backs for plate cameras allowing them to use film packs or roll film were also available, as were backs that enabled rollfilm cameras to use plates.

Except for a few special types such as Schmidt cameras, most professional astrographs continued to use plates until the end of the 20th century when electronic photography replaced them.

TLRs and SLRs

The first practical reflex camera was the Franke & Heidecke Rolleiflex medium format TLR of 1928. Though both single- and twin-lens reflex cameras had been available for decades, they were too bulky to achieve much popularity. The Rolleiflex, however, was sufficiently compact to achieve widespread popularity and the medium-format TLR design became popular for both high- and low-end cameras.

A similar revolution in SLR design began in 1933 with the introduction of the Ihagee Exakta, a compact SLR which used 127 rollfilm. This was followed three years later by the first Western SLR to use 135 film, the Kine Exakta (World's first true 35mm SLR was Soviet "Sport" camera, marketed several months before Kine Exakta, though "Sport" used its own film cartridge). The 35mm SLR design gained immediate popularity and there was an explosion of new models and innovative features after World War II. There were also a few 35mm TLRs, the best-known of which was the Contaflex of 1935, but for the most part these met with little success.

The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the Hungarian Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the Contax S, the first camera to use a pentaprism. Prior to this, all SLRs were equipped with waist-level focusing screens. The Duflex was also the first SLR with an instant-return mirror, which prevented the viewfinder from being blacked out after each exposure. This same time period also saw the introduction of the Hasselblad 1600F, which set the standard for medium format SLRs for decades.

In 1952 the Asahi Optical Company (which later became well known for its Pentax cameras) introduced the first Japanese SLR using 135 film, the Asahiflex. Several other Japanese camera makers also entered the SLR market in the 1950s, including Canon, Yashica, and Nikon. Nikon's entry, the Nikon F, had a full line of interchangeable components and accessories and is generally regarded as the first Japanese system camera. It was the F, along with the earlier S series of rangefinder cameras, that helped establish Nikon's reputation as a maker of professional-quality equipment.

Arrival of true digital cameras

By the late 1980s, the technology required to produce truly commercial digital cameras existed. The first true portable digital camera that recorded images as a computerized file was likely the Fuji DS-1P of 1988, which recorded to a 2 MB SRAM memory card that used a battery to keep the data in memory. This camera was never marketed to the public.

The first digital camera of any kind ever sold commercially was possibly the MegaVision Tessera in 1987 though there is not extensive documentation of its sale known. The first portable digital camera that was actually marketed commercially was sold in December 1989 in Japan, the DS-X by Fuji The first commercially available portable digital camera in the United States was the Dycam Model 1, first shipped in November 1990. It was originally a commercial failure because it was black and white, low in resolution, and cost nearly $1,000 (about $2000 in 2014). It later saw modest success when it was re-sold as the Logitech Fotoman in 1992. It used a CCD image sensor, stored pictures digitally, and connected directly to a computer for download.

In 1991, Kodak brought to market the Kodak DCS (Kodak Digital Camera System), the beginning of a long line of professional Kodak DCSSLR cameras that were based in part on film bodies, often Nikons. It used a 1.3 megapixel sensor, had a bulky external digital storage system and was priced at $13,000. At the arrival of the Kodak DCS-200, the Kodak DCS was dubbed Kodak DCS-100.

The move to digital formats was helped by the formation of the first JPEG and MPEG standards in 1988, which allowed image and video files to be compressed for storage. The first consumer camera with a liquid crystal display on the back was the Casio QV-10 developed by a team led by Hiroyuki Suetaka in 1995. The first camera to use CompactFlash was the Kodak DC-25 in 1996. The first camera that offered the ability to record video clips may have been the Ricoh RDC-1 in 1995.

In 1995 Minolta introduced the RD-175, which was based on the Minolta 500si SLR with a splitter and three independent CCDs. This combination delivered 1.75M pixels. The benefit of using an SLR base was the ability to use any existing Minolta AF mount lens. 1999 saw the introduction of the Nikon D1, a 2.74 megapixel camera that was the first digital SLR developed entirely from the ground up by a major manufacturer, and at a cost of under $6,000 at introduction was affordable by professional photographers and high-end consumers. This camera also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which meant film photographers could use many of the same lenses they already owned.

Digital camera sales continued to flourish, driven by technology advances. The digital market segmented into different categories, Compact Digital Still Cameras, Bridge Cameras, Mirrorless Compacts and Digital SLRs. One of the major technology advances was the development of CMOS sensors, which helped drive sensor costs low enough to enable the widespread adoption of camera phones.

Source: Wikipedia

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Getting into the World of Photography

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

 -Dorothea Lange

Ahh.. So true. Photography is not only about capturing what you see. Photography is about expressing your emotions, your thought process, your state of mind. Writers write books to express themselves, dancers dance their hearts out, a sketch artists brings their sketches to life with their beautiful drawings, sculptors, magicians, painters, chefs, everybody has "outlets", if I may, for their emotions. Similarly we photographers express ourselves through the photographs we take. That's the the main reason I got into photography. I'm kind of an introvert so I wanted a medium through which I could express myself.. painting, dancing takes years to practice and decades to master. Hence photography. 
It was not like I always wanted to do Photography. Frankly I had no idea that this went this deep. It was only 3 years back I first tried used an SLR. My uncle who was practising photography at the time took me to his farm house, gave me his camera taught me the basics like exposure control and aperture and ISO and just told me to take pictures of whatever I felt like. I went around his farm and clicked a few pictures mostly nature and he was quite impressed. It was then I realised that I had the basic skill set of becoming a photographer and ever since that day I've been leaning the art of photography.

Photography is a very vast field. Oh my God you have no idea how many categories or genre of photography there are. Each with a unique style and specific equipments. For starters, there is 
1. Fashion photography
2. Nature photography
3. Wildlife photography
4. Black and White photography 
5. Wedding photography
6. Travel Photography
7. Time Lapse photography and many many many more. Trust me there are so many more different kinds of photography. I would say there are at least another 30 kinds of photography. It's your choice what kind of photography you want to get into. No one can tell you what kind of a photographer you are. Oh no no. You have to find out for yourself. One can only guide you or give you some basic knowledge, tips on handling an SLR, some Dos and Donts. The  basic stuff. And that is what I intend to do with this blog. If you like to do photography and been wanting to, hopefully this MIGHT help you to get a perspective and a rough idea of what its like. 

Choosing an Instrument:

A pen is to a Calligraphic artist is as a DSLR is to a photographer. 

I started off with my uncles Nikon DSLR. I used it for almost a year before I bought my own. I would suggest you do the same. Just to be on a safer side. If you know what you're buying then chances of you regretting it will be virtually non existent. I'm sure at least one person you know has an SLR. Borrow it for a few days. It may be a Nikon or a Canon. 

People often ask me which is better Nikon or Canon. It's like asking which is better Pepsi or Coca-cola or Samsung or Apple or PS4 or XBOX one. It's more like a personal preference. The camera I have currently is a Nikon but I personally prefer a Canon. It's all comes down to personal preference. Like any other products, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Like for example a Nikon is simpler to use when compared to a Canon. On the contrary a Canon offers more features than a Nikon. I am of course talking about the entry level DSLRs (Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras). Not even the semi professional ones. I am talking about the entry level cameras for people who are getting into photography. 

So like I said It all comes down to personal preferences. The best advice I can give is borrow a camera for a few days and see which one you prefer. A Canon or a Nikon. 

The Beginning of Photography: 

As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of types of photography you can practice. If you ask me, the best way to begin photography is with bird photography. There is a very good reason behind this claim. As you begin using a DSLR (which isn't easy), there are things you have to do just before you take the picture. Like for instance adjust the exposure (shutter speed) which depends on the background. And controlling the ISO, and exposure component and depth of field. For the right photograph, you have to constantly keep on changing these parameters. How you know what parameters to vary how much to vary? By constantly using your DSLR. and I reckon starting off with bird photography will help you in a great way because birds are one of the most difficult to capture as they are constantly changing places.. Constantly flying off from one tree to another.. Which means the settings you adjusted to the previous frame is different from the current frame.. And most of the time you'll forget to change your settings. Doing bird photography requires a lot of patience, precision, and skill. At the same time you have to be quick with your equipment. Only when you get all these right, you get the PERFECT photograph and the amount of satisfaction you get when you capture the right one.. is unparalleled!

Buying The Right Lens:

DSLRs have interchangeable lenses. Meaning you can have multiple lens for a single body (body is what we refer to an SLR without the lens). Usually you'll get an 18-55mm (read as 18 to 55 mm) lens with your body. We call it a kit-lens. A kit-lens is the lens you get when you buy the camera.. The term "mm" refers to he focal length of the lens. It basically tells us the zoom capacity if the lens. Bigger the number higher is the zooming capacity.  As simple as that. Sometimes you'll get 2 kit-lens with your camera (depends on the promotional offers offered by the respective companies). The second kit-lens you get is usually a 55-200mm lens. If you ask me you at least have to have a 300mm lens to do bird photography. 200mm is kind of pushing it. So I suggest.. Buy a body with the 18-55mm kit-lens and invest in a 70-300mm lens. 

The Other Things:

"The other things" refer to the commodities that keep your camera and lens clean. You should NEVER touch the lens let alone clean it with your cleaning cloth. You get specialised equipments to do that.. Such as a lens pen (used to clean the lens), a blower (used to blow off dust from your camera and lens), a special cleaning cloth, and so on. These things are not at all expensive and it is highly recommended if you want to maintain your equipment. Other "other things" include tripods, filters, wireless utilities, GPS devices and so on (more on that later). 

So, conclusion.. You have you Camera, your lens, your goals and your vision. So what are you waiting for? The time is now. Photography is a beautiful thing. Once you begin you never stop. Grab your camera, put on your thinking hat and just go with it!

If i have left out on anything, please feel free to ask me anything. If you have any suggestions, please done hesitate to ask me.   

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The Walk of life

Its amazing how things work out.. I've been wanting to write this post from January of last year. Finally found the time and motivation to complete it.
its been more than 4 years since my sister got married and moved to USA.. and yet the memory of her living here seems to be so fresh. I mean no surprises there we lived under the same roof for 18 years. My brother-in-law is a great guy. Very driven. Very focused.
Me and my sister were very close.. sure we would argue.. but we were so close. I used to think as she grew older and started college she would spend less time with me and more time with  her peers. but fortunately that wasn't the case. She always took me out. She made plans with me she helped me out she was a great sister and she was a very reasonable person. She used to be patient with me and teach me and help me with my school stuff.. I was a slow learner she never lost her temper with me.
And as a second born, there are things you don't get to do. you don't get to create new rules. you only get to follow rules created by the first born. its the same in any household where i come from. let me give you an example.. my sister could stay out till say 10pm and for me to stay out till 10pm I had to be her age(which was unfair because all my friends could stay out till 10pm because they were all first born children). And whatever I get I used to get second hand. Like mobile phones or bicycles ad things like that. Hey I'm not complaining don't get me wrong these things taught me great values and value for money. Now I think twice before I buy anything for that matter. sometimes I miss her a lot.
anyway, like I said, its been more than 4 years since she moved to USA and she visited us I think 3 times.


This photo was taken the first time she visited us. I think it had been a little more than a year since she got married.
Oh and there's one more thing you have to know. My sister met my brother-in-law about 6 months before marriage. And in these 6 months they only used to communicate through Skype because he was in USA.
During the time of the marriage they were both a little shy, a bit reserved (naturally). The amount of progress they made in one year (not necessarily them in particular. I'm referring to all married couple) was tremendous. I took this photo during their first visit. There are 2 ways of looking at this photo.. Their holding hands and walking together tells us that they are comfortable with each other, they depend on each other,  and more basically they do love each other and they're happy with each other.
The other way of looking at this photo is like this. You see a lot of bright areas and dark areas in this frame. The white area represents the happy times or the times of joy. The darker area represents the tough times. And what is it they are doing? They are holding hands and walking through the happy and sad times together.. Supporting each other, always being there for each other. Life is not only about the happy times. Life is a healthy mixture of the happy and unhappy moments. That's the way it is. And its up to you who you want to share it with.

They are very happy with their lives and they very recently celebrated 1st birthday of their son (MY Nephew).

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