History of Photography

Andy Warhol once said that photography was the only art medium in which there was even the remotest possibility of an accidental masterpiece. And he was right! Accidental masterpieces are created by amateurs and professionals alike – and I’m sure you have one yourself that you’re particularly proud of…

The History of Digital Photography

Photography used to be a chemical art that took skill and training. Knowledge of optics and chemistry used to be as essential as an understanding of the rule of thirds. Photographers used to lug around view cameras, or Hasselblads and roll film. As little as twenty years ago a decent portable strobe meant carrying a generator with you (or an extension cord as long as the road between here and no-where). Umbrellas were just about the only light modification available to photographers. The softboxes that were available were still made of fibreglass and frosted plexi, and were typically mounted on huge studio stands attached to Broncolor power packs. Sync cords always seemed to be in need of repair and wireless remotes were infra-red only and maddeningly unreliable.

Today, even professional photographers play with light-weight toys that take images of astounding quality, and even little on-camera flashes have not only dedicated softboxes, but snoots, grids and barn doors. There is battery powered lighting available now that have more than a thousand watts at your disposal. Pocket Wizards and other radio slaves now allow remote triggering of lights and cameras at distances of more than thirty metres. You can have a strobe that fires a flash fast enough to catch anything you require perfectly, from a bullet entering an apple to a fish-eagle swooping down on its prey in midflight.

Where film speed used to be a choice between ISO 64, 100 or 400, a good DSLR can now shoot at ISO 1600 with even less grain and noise than any of the old films. If you can see something, you can create an image out of it – hand held no less!

White balancing used to be a choice between daylight and tungsten films, and shooting in fluorescent light was a nightmare accompanied by various combinations of magenta and red filters.

Retouching used to mean a painstaking process of changing an actual print with an airbrush or pencil. There was no undo, or the ability to start over if you did something wrong.

Colour photography printing used to be a choice between prints that would fade in a few years, or Cibachrome, a medium whose colour was beautiful and intense, but incredibly toxic. The tones were also so contrasty that really good prints were almost impossible to achieve.

These days you can self publish your own monograph and it will be higher quality than what the most successful photographers could accomplish a quarter of a century ago.

As photographers, we’re all on an exciting journey. It’s worthwhile studying the history of photography not only to see where we came from but to appreciate what we have today all the more.

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