A picture is worth more than a thousand words; it is a means of personal expression and the appreciation of it, all at the same time. A photograph has the ability to capture feelings, ideas, experiences, moments in time, and immortalize them forever. And as it can convey these expressions faster, and occasionally more effectively than words, it has become one of the primary modes of communication in the digital world.
The first photograph ever captured was when Napolean just arrived on St Helena in 1816, a Frenchman, Nicephore Niepce succeeded in capturing small camera images on paper treated with silver chloride which is another chemical sensitive to light. But like Wedgwood, he was not able to fix and preserve these images. He began experimenting with other light-sensitive substances. In 1822, Niepce invented a process and named it as “heliography” which is a Greek word meaning “sun drawing” from helios and graphe. He succeeded in making the earliest surviving camera photograph in 1826/7. The photograph represented a view from a window at Le Gras (his hometown in Burgundy, France) captured on a pewter plate coated in bitumen diluted in lavender oil.
Photography has evolved from its original purpose of documentation into a language in its own right. Different methods of photography convey different emotions, and often each photographer, in the course of time, develops their own style. Each year, in celebration of this art form, many promotional photography competitions are announced with various themes to choose from. It is hard to imagine a world without photography, it is so omnipresent whether in science, advertisement, current media events, etc.
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