Our 3rd Lecture this term came from Dr. Ingham who discussed the meaning of a photograph and how it can be modified by a caption. Some say photographs have too much meaning with a caption or not enough meaning without.
When was the first photograph? 1836, ‘Rooftops’ by Nicéphore Niépce – ‘View from the window at Le Gras. It was made using a camera obscura, which is a man made lens that one can use today to take images with distorted effects/filters – similar to a pinhole camera. In 1839, this was the year where photography really commenced.
Niepce was a French inventor, now usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field. Niepce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a world scene. Among Niépce’s other inventions was the Pyreolophore, the world’s first internal conmbustion machine, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude.
- Photography is merely ‘light’ and ‘drawing’
- A posing holder is a device which constraints so people could not move when posing as this would make the image blurry.
- For example, in Victorian times, no one in photographs smiled as the mouth would get warped and blurry – they would have to sit there for sometimes up to 5 minutes for the image to be taken! Such a change from today and the ‘selfie’ generation we are all involved in.
Above is an example of the blurry image quality of a smiling photograph – but this makes me happy how they tried! It didn’t seem too depressing back then.
The first self- portrait photograph
The difference between selfies and a self portrait is different. A selfie is a photo that one takes of themselves, yet may not be as serious as a self portrait. Is it possible to take an unposed self portrait? The class argued ‘no’, yet perhaps one could take the ‘accidental self portrait’, which just seems contradictory to the whole process and point of a selfie.
Here is our ‘selfie/self portrait’ in the class:
Our selfie…… my ears are big. Thanks Armel for being such a good model.
He has experience of this: http://www.topnews.in/armel-bellec-pink-panther-2-new-york-premiere-arrivals-2120368
makissasmeeton 