Camera-less photographs occupy an important yet underappreciated place in the history of photography. While still considered an experimental medium, the photogram, or camera-less image is a photograph produced by the action of light on a light-sensitive surface without the aid of a camera and lens. Camera-less photographs engage the core of the photographic process —…
Category: History of the Camera
Varanasi Streets | the ProCam App
The cameraphone merges the most important communication devices in the history of the planet—the telephone, the camera, and the internet. The camera phone or smartphone concept has dramatically reshaped expectations of photography and the look and feel of the camera. Camera phone conventions appeared in 1988, and the first wireless camera phone prototype appeared in…
Relics, In A Gold Country
That the past is different from the present is its foremost attraction. We know about the past through history, memory, and relics. Photography is critical in shaping our knowledge of the past, as a physical record of the past, as a stimulus to memory, and through the creation of visual artifacts of the past.[1] The…
Experimenting with Lens Blur: the Burnside 35mm Lens
Humans see binocularly, whereas a camera lens records light with only one light source—monocularly establishing a single point of focus. The photographer chooses a single point of focus, giving emphasis and meaning to the image. By adjusting the focus in the image, a photographer can establish a hierarchy of focus and attention over the image….
Matching Color From a Vintage Stereo Card
The stereo camera coupled with the stereoscope is one of the 19th century’s most unique inventions. The stereography extended the visual reach of photography and unlike any other photographic process or invention, through the vivid illusion of three-dimensionality, “captured the visual essence of nature.”[1] In the presentation above, I demonstrate how to use Photoshop’s Match…
Frank Hurley, Antarctica, the Kodak Vest Pocket
The Australian photographer, Frank Hurley is a unique case, and inexplicably his achievements remain largely unreported in many current histories of photography. Although primarily known as a still photographer, Hurley would pioneer techniques first seen with his Antarctic expedition photography to create a wholly new entertainment form known as the “travelogue” or the “travel-adventure documentary” film.[1] Although his best work was completed one hundred…
Experimenting with the Square Format: Using the Spartus Full-Vue With Tungsten Film
Many notable photographers used twin-lens cameras: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, and Diane Arbus. The first twin-lens reflex camera appeared in 1880 as a specially built camera for the Kew Observatory in England. The first production twin lens camera appeared in 1882, introduced as the Academy by the British firm, Marion and Company. The camera,…
Experimenting with Box Cameras: Brownies at Mono Lake
In 1888, the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company headed by George Eastman, introduced the Kodak camera, a wooden box “neatly covered in black leather”[1] which became the most significant event in the history of the medium since the invention of photography. The camera was loaded with a 100-exposure roll of silver gelatin film attached…
Downieville Cemetery: Portraits of Gravestones
Situated at the bottom of a deep narrow canyon at the confluence of the Downie and Yuba Rivers, Downieville, California prospered from the gold taken from the fast-moving alpine rivers and streams. At the peak of the Gold Rush, about 5,000 miners worked extensive hydraulic diggings and deep rock mines in the area. Then, Downieville…
A Point of Historical Interest—Toys Left for Julius.
About 7 miles east of Nevada City, California, and just off Highway 20 is a Point of Historical Interest, the burial site of Julius Albert Apperson, a two-year-old boy who died on May 6, 1858. In 1971, the Native Sons of the Golden West erected a monument at the site for “A pioneer who crossed…
Experimenting with Infrared Digital Capture
Constructed in 1955, MS Aurora was the first ship wholly made in German shipyards following World War II. MS Aurora began service as a day cruiser named the MV Wappen Von Hamburg, serving the ports of Hamburg, Cuxhaven, Heligoland, and Hornum in the North Sea. Later the ship was sold to new owners who converted…