Mike Mercury
06-23-2011, 2:59pm
http://www.weddingsbymjk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/The-first-photograph.jpg
The grainy picture above is the world’s first photograph called "View from the Window at Le Gras" (circa 1826), taken and developed by French photographer pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. He called this process "heliography" or sun drawing – it certainly was a long process: the exposure time was about 8 hours.
In 1824 Niépce met with some degree of success in copying engravings, but it would be two years later before he had success utilizing pewter plates as the support medium for the process. By the summer of that year, 1826, Niépce was ready. In the window of his upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras, he set up a camera obscura, placed within it a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum), and uncapped the lens. After at least a day-long exposure of eight hours, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was the permanent direct positive picture you see here—a one-of-a-kind photograph on pewter. It renders a view of the outbuildings, courtyard, trees and landscape as seen from that upstairs window.
this is the actual plate that was exposed:
http://www.theasc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1.-first_photo_-pewter-plate.jpeg
Below, the First Photograph, housed in its original presentational frame and sealed within an atmosphere of inert gas in an airtight steel and plexiglas storage frame, must be viewed under controlled lighting in order for its image to be visible. In general, this procedure also requires viewing within a darkened environment free of other incidental light sources. This effect, suggestive of Gernsheim's fIrst viewing of the mirror-like effect of the pewter plate, attempts to give each viewer the chance to experience the effect of discovery from which the image can be seen to seemingly emerge from the original heliograph plate.
http://homestudyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Heliograph-in-original-frame-Photograph.jpg
the plate was housed in a smaller version of a Camera Obscura box;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3xAnhJsUtp8/TMRh5VyNtjI/AAAAAAAAAA8/K5UvJFm4y3M/s1600/kircher-camera-obscura.gif
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3xAnhJsUtp8/TMRl6uv9yeI/AAAAAAAAABM/NBzG53mB0IQ/s1600/Camera_Obscura_box.jpg
first photo taken with a human in view:
http://unitedcats.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/oldest_human_photo.jpg?w=700
This is one of the, if not the, oldest known photograph of a human being in existence. It depends on how one defines photograph, but this was taken by Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre in 1838. (The fellow the daguerreotype was named after.) This is a photo of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. This is a busy street and there was tons of traffic, but since the exposure was so long, about 15-20 minutes, none of the moving figures can be seen. The only people visible are a guy getting his boots polished and the bootblack. Who was this nameless gentleman or the bootblack? No one knows. I’m sure they never imagined that they had been immortalized, albeit anonymously, by a clever scientist testing his newly discovered method of preserving moments in time.
closeup of subjects:
http://gregorear.com/images/bootman.jpg
The grainy picture above is the world’s first photograph called "View from the Window at Le Gras" (circa 1826), taken and developed by French photographer pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. He called this process "heliography" or sun drawing – it certainly was a long process: the exposure time was about 8 hours.
In 1824 Niépce met with some degree of success in copying engravings, but it would be two years later before he had success utilizing pewter plates as the support medium for the process. By the summer of that year, 1826, Niépce was ready. In the window of his upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras, he set up a camera obscura, placed within it a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum), and uncapped the lens. After at least a day-long exposure of eight hours, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was the permanent direct positive picture you see here—a one-of-a-kind photograph on pewter. It renders a view of the outbuildings, courtyard, trees and landscape as seen from that upstairs window.
this is the actual plate that was exposed:
http://www.theasc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1.-first_photo_-pewter-plate.jpeg
Below, the First Photograph, housed in its original presentational frame and sealed within an atmosphere of inert gas in an airtight steel and plexiglas storage frame, must be viewed under controlled lighting in order for its image to be visible. In general, this procedure also requires viewing within a darkened environment free of other incidental light sources. This effect, suggestive of Gernsheim's fIrst viewing of the mirror-like effect of the pewter plate, attempts to give each viewer the chance to experience the effect of discovery from which the image can be seen to seemingly emerge from the original heliograph plate.
http://homestudyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Heliograph-in-original-frame-Photograph.jpg
the plate was housed in a smaller version of a Camera Obscura box;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3xAnhJsUtp8/TMRh5VyNtjI/AAAAAAAAAA8/K5UvJFm4y3M/s1600/kircher-camera-obscura.gif
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3xAnhJsUtp8/TMRl6uv9yeI/AAAAAAAAABM/NBzG53mB0IQ/s1600/Camera_Obscura_box.jpg
first photo taken with a human in view:
http://unitedcats.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/oldest_human_photo.jpg?w=700
This is one of the, if not the, oldest known photograph of a human being in existence. It depends on how one defines photograph, but this was taken by Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre in 1838. (The fellow the daguerreotype was named after.) This is a photo of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. This is a busy street and there was tons of traffic, but since the exposure was so long, about 15-20 minutes, none of the moving figures can be seen. The only people visible are a guy getting his boots polished and the bootblack. Who was this nameless gentleman or the bootblack? No one knows. I’m sure they never imagined that they had been immortalized, albeit anonymously, by a clever scientist testing his newly discovered method of preserving moments in time.
closeup of subjects:
http://gregorear.com/images/bootman.jpg