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| William Henry Fox Tabot's 1835 photo from Lacock Abbey. |
Modern film photography has taken the world years to create. The basic principles of the camera and its recording medium, film, has transformed over the years into the form that we know and love today.
Dating back to the 5th century BC, the basics of the camera were discovered, and from there the idea and reality of still images grew.
By William Henry Fox Talbot’s time, the mid 1800s, the process was at a crucial turning point. Through Talbot’s determination (and mounds of British pounds), he created the Calotype photographic process - the first process that was negative/positive, and could make multiple prints.
The problem with the previous photographic process, the camera obscura was the fact that the exposure required 8 hours of light and the pictures faded away.
For his discovery of the Calotype process, Talbot deserves the respect and homage that he did not receive during his lifetime.
Like myself, Talbot said “After various fruitless attempts I laid aside the instrument and came to the conclusion that [the pencil’s] use required a previous knowledge of drawing which unfortunately did not possess.”
One of Talbot’s main motivations to create the new photographic process was to capture images that he could not document with pencil and paper.
As a botanist, Talbot was required to observe and document plant specimens, but due to his lack of artistic skills with drawing, he was incapable of sketching.
His determination to create a lasting photographic process is what makes him stand out among the multitudes of photographers in history.
Dating back to the 5th century BC, the basics of the camera were discovered, and from there the idea and reality of still images grew.
By William Henry Fox Talbot’s time, the mid 1800s, the process was at a crucial turning point. Through Talbot’s determination (and mounds of British pounds), he created the Calotype photographic process - the first process that was negative/positive, and could make multiple prints.
The problem with the previous photographic process, the camera obscura was the fact that the exposure required 8 hours of light and the pictures faded away.
“I then thought of trying again a method which I had tried many years before,” Talbot said, “This method was to take Camera Obscura and to throw the image of the objects on a piece of paper in its focus-fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away...”
This roadblock only motivated the multi-talented Talbot to usedhis knowledge in a multitude of fields to create a process that changed the course of photographic history.For his discovery of the Calotype process, Talbot deserves the respect and homage that he did not receive during his lifetime.
Like myself, Talbot said “After various fruitless attempts I laid aside the instrument and came to the conclusion that [the pencil’s] use required a previous knowledge of drawing which unfortunately did not possess.”
One of Talbot’s main motivations to create the new photographic process was to capture images that he could not document with pencil and paper.
As a botanist, Talbot was required to observe and document plant specimens, but due to his lack of artistic skills with drawing, he was incapable of sketching.
His determination to create a lasting photographic process is what makes him stand out among the multitudes of photographers in history.
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