- What is photography?
- Origin of photography
- What is photography for?
- Photography features
- Types of photography
- Photography as art
We explain what photography is, how it originated and what this artistic technique is for. In addition, its characteristics and the types that exist.
What is photography?
Photography is called a technique and a form of art which consist of capturing images using light, projecting it and fixing it in the form of images on a sensitive medium (physical or digital).
All photography is based on the same principle as the "dark camera", an optical instrument that consists of a totally dark compartment equipped with a small hole at one end, through which light enters and projects images onto the darkened background. images of what happens outside the compartment, albeit reversed.
In the case of photographic cameras, the principle is exactly the same, except that they are equipped with lenses to sharpen the focus of the projected, mirrors to reinvert the projected image and finally a photosensitive tape (or a similar digital sensor), which captures the image and saves it, so that it can later be developed or viewed digitally.
The images obtained in this way are also called photographs or photos, and are the result of decades of refining the technique and photosensitive materials, until they achieve the optical quality of modern cameras. In addition, this technology allowed the development and improvement of other similar ones, including the cinematography.
See also: Collage.
Origin of photography
Before the photographic camera was invented, there were attempts to capture the visual image, with heliogravures and daguerreotypes, precursor techniques of the 19th century that were moderately successful, but were very expensive and blurred.
Photography as such was invented in the transition to industrial society, obeying the spirit of the time that yearned for objectivity and rational truthfulness (positivism).
He inherited from the daguerreotype his use of polished silver photosensitive films, developed with mercury vapors. But these were toxic elements and successive scientists and inventors of the nineteenth century were coming up with better methods and better results, until the appearance of bromide plates in 1871 and then photographic film as such in the first kodak camera in 1888.
Later, the technique did not stop innovating: in 1907 Lumière invented color photography, in 1931 the first electronic flash was achieved, in 1948 Polaroid photography, and in 1990 photographic digitization.
What is photography for?
Photography fulfills an important documentary or journalistic role in our days, since it allows to capture real images and reproduce them in physical or digital media, thus being able to observe events that occurred in other latitudes and / or in other historical times.
Journalism, science and history today are inseparable from photography, and photo albums or picture frames were found in any house of the 20th century. In the 21st century, on the other hand, the place to accumulate photographs seems to be digital: the hard drives of the computers or even social media.
On the other hand, geography, astronomy and other applied sciences have seen in photography the opportunity to capture and enlarge the image of extremely distant or infinitely small objects, thus being able to massively disseminate them.
Photography features
Photography consists of converting the light of a certain moment into a physical impression of what is visible through the camera. In that sense, it is fixed (it lacks movement), it is uneditable (except through digital resources) and it is durable over time, although with the passing of the years its materials lose quality and therefore image sharpness.
Types of photography
According to its claims and the nature of the photographed object, we can talk about:
- Advertising photography. The one that serves as advertising or promotion of consumer products, whatever they may be. It is often the target of digital interventions and other types of strategic “fixes”.
- Fashion photography. The one that accompanies the parades and other fashion events, emphasizing the way of dressing or wearing or combing hair.
- Documentary photography. Also called historical or journalistic, it is done for informational or educational purposes, that is, as part of the transmission of a message.
- Landscape photography. That which is taken to display the nature in their fullness, such as aerial or underwater shots, usually very open and full of color.
- Scientific photography. The one taken by the scholars of nature through telescopes, microscopes and other tools, to show what is not commonly seen with the naked eye.
- Artistic photography. The one that pursues aesthetic purposes: portraits, montages, compositions, etc.
Photography as art
Photography was not always considered as a possible art, since it lacked in its beginnings the diffusion and acceptance of today, and the painting as an artistic means of representation of reality.
However, throughout the 20th century, novel aesthetic trends developed that influenced the sensibilities of the time and opened the way for photographic art to demonstrate its subjective potential, since it was thought that it did nothing more than show the objects placed in front of the camera.