The following answers are based on the information presented in the BBC documentary ‘The Genius Of Photography‘.
What is Camera Obscura?
This is the process of allowing a fraction of light into a dark space through a small hole, which allows the scenery outside to be projected into that space. Coming from the Latin for ‘dark chamber’, this optical trick is an astonishing, natural use of light – something that must be seen to be believed. The header image is a photo by Abelardo Morell in a National Geographic feature about the phenomenon.
How does daguerreotypes differ from Henry Fox Talbot’s photographic process?
Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot were two rivals who set out to create processes to ‘fix the shadows’ in photography in the 1830s.
In 1934, Talbot wanted to put 3D scenes on to paper but he had no drawing abilities. This prompted him to experiment with camera obscura, chemistry, paper, silver salts and shoebox sized cameras. What he discovered was a paper process that worked with positives and negatives of an image, which were reversed laterally and tonally.
Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1839, Daguerre, a showman entrepreneur type, discovered an entirely different process. Instead of using paper, Daguerre used a mirrored metal plate to fix images and this plate in the camera was what would eventually be the final image.
Here, the light works differently, with just positives and offers more detail, which one of the presenters described as images that were ‘at the edge of being present’.
Image source: The National Science and Media Museum (UK)
The difference?
While Daguerre created one off pieces (similar to that of a polaroid, which some referred to as a ‘mirror with a memory’), the disadvantage with this method was that you could not make reproductions of the original image. Additionally, the treatment process was so easily ruined by one wrong move and the slates were quite fragile.
However with Talbot’s paper process, an image could be multiplied and widely distributed. The paper process was sturdier and more reliable. In the end, Talbot’s method could be commercialised easier and therefore was the most popular process for centuries to come.
What is Eadweard Muybridge best known for?
Muybridge was a scientist, artist, inventor and entrepreneur, best known for his photographic study of subjects in motion. He experimented in the 1870s with the help of a man named Lelan Stanford, photographing horses bolting and capturing details faster than the human eye could process.
This ability to freeze motion in time with an impressively fast shutter speed, was a turning point in photography. After the initial horse project, Muybridge decided that this discovery should be used to document all and any living creature that he could access. He went on to capture botanical life, animals and humans in an almost encyclopedia type approach.
BEKAH MOLONY 