George Eastman Part 2

At first George Eastman’s idea was to use a lighter and more flexible support than glass, and he coated the photographic emulsion on paper and then loaded the paper in a roll holder. The view holder was used in view cameras in place of the holders for glass plates. His work was successful with some minor changes like changing the paper, which wasn’t working out due to reproducing grain from the paper onto the image. He then came up with the idea to coat the paper with a gelatin followed by a layer of insoluble light-sensitive gelatin. After the exposure and development the gel bearing the image was then stripped from the paper, transferred to a new sheet of clear gel, and then varnished with collodion (which was a cellulose solution that forms a tough yet flexible film). The transparent roll film and roll holder were finally perfected. Eastman’s goal in all this was to make the camera more convenient for the average Joe so that photography would become more popular. He realized to spread the word he would need to take a big step in advertising. His first major slogan that he bought was, “’you press the button, we do the rest.’” The same year that he trademarked this slogan was also the year that he introduced the first Kodak camera in 1888. The word started to get out about Kodak and was advertised greatly in London which was a really big step for the company. It was said that the name ‘Kodak’ was just invented out of thin air from George Eastman’s thoughts, but today it is known around the world.
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/historyOfKodak/eastmanTheMan.jhtml

George Eastman Part 1

George Eastman was in a struggling family, with no father, that needed support in terms of money. In order for him to do that he had to become a high school dropout in order to start working at the age of fourteen. George bought his first camera, at the age of twenty four, when a coworker of his suggested that he document his vacation to Santo Domingo. The camera included and outfit in order to carry around all of the supplies and parts needed for the camera and to later develop the photographs. He didn’t end up making his vacation but did discover his love for photography. Through this he realized what a complicated process it was to develop a picture and was then determined to make the process simpler. He started off by making gelatin emulsions which he read about in British magazines. His mother had said that George would stay up so late working on this process that he couldn’t even make it to bed some night and would fall asleep on the kitchen floor next to his working area. After three years of hard work, long nights, and endless experiments Eastman finally had figured out a formula that worked. By 1880 he had invented a dry plate formula and a machine that could prepare a large number of the plates and then had the idea that others would want to use his methods and thought to make some for sale. In the same year George started his own small business selling the plates that eventually grew into a much larger company
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/historyOfKodak/eastmanTheMan.jhtml

Matthew B. Brady, Civil War Photographer

When Matthew B. Brady was young he moved to New York and studied photography in the free time that he had. Apparently Brady had found his calling in the field of photography because in 1844 he had opened his own studio of photography right in New York. He photographed a lot of famous people, done in portraits and said, “’.. I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the facts of its historic men and mothers.’” Matthew Brady was one of the first ever photographers to use his photography to document national history chronologically. Just as his portrait photography was at it’s highest he tried a different approach and turned his attention to Civil War photography. Brady planned to gather a group of photographers that would follow the troops in the battle field in order to document the war on a larger scale. Due to this method ‘his’ pictures, weren’t actually his, just his idea with him behind them. Though he did not take the pictures he was the working behind it all. He was the one that worked behind the scenes to preserve the negatives that the group of photographers had taken as well as to manage the films, cameras, etc. When the work was printed there was the issue of how to print as the actually photographers names or Brady’s name. In the end the result was that the photographs were “credited ‘Photographed by Brady’” even though the work was not taken by him. In 1862 he displayed the pictures in his gallery which allowed America to finally see how gruesome the war actually was, and not glorified at all. Although America was intrigued by the reality of war they weren’t interested in purchasing his work which led to Brady going bankrupt. Matthew risked his life and changed his entire lifestyle to show the world what they were unable to see in the war and to him that was all worth it.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwbrady.html

Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen, born in 1879, was one of the first ever fashion photographer. He had the talent to turn the work of ordinary photography and give it an edge. He put more thought into his photography to make it an art form. Through the years he was always interested in art and the new beginning processes of photography. In 1888 he left school to work at a lithographing company. He bought his first camera in 1895 and just three years later he was accepted at the Second Philadelphia Salon of Pictorial Photography. On his way to study painting in Paris he stopped in New York and was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz, who was an American photographer leading a movement that would help other people recognize that photography was fine art. They became close friends and cofounded the Photo-Secession. The Photo-Secession was an organization that they dedicated to making sure photography was known as a fine art, and also to exhibit one of their galleries. During world war I he was in charge of all aerial photography of the America Expedition Force, and in 1919 retired as lieutenant colonel and settled down in France. Later he returned to America and opened a commercial studio in New York which specialized in advertising photography. In the 1920’s he produced fashion illustration, which was new, as well as portraiture for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. He closed his studio in 1938 to breed plants, and was then called back to command all Navy combat photography. When he was 68 years old he was named the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His largest and most famous exhibit was titles “The Family of Man” containing 503 photographs and was later put into a book that became a best seller. He was a large part in promoting the artistic side that photography has to offer and continued to achieve major accomplishments throughout his lifetime.

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/edward-steichen/

Ideas

1st point & shoot camera
1st DSLR camera
film to digital
1st film camera
early photographs and how the styles differ from today
early war photographers, what did they photograph?
invention of the lens --> telescope lens?
box camera? (stick figure drawing from class)
dark room process
who's idea was the dark room
1st photograph with a purpose, no just 1st image
1st picture of president, who photographed it?
1st fashion photographer
styles differ, east, south, north, west
styles evolve over time
box camera
the sutton
stereoscope viwer

The Calotype process

The Calotype process was a positive/negative process that wasn’t introduced until 1841 and stayed popular for the next ten years. The process was introduced by Fox Talbot who devised the process and showed his results at the Royal Institution in 1839. When using the term Calotype it strictly refers to the negative image, but commonly it is taken to mean both, positive and negative. A piece of paper was brushed with a light salt solution, dried, and then brushed with a thin silver nitrate solution, then dried again, creating silver chloride in the paper. By doing this the paper becomes sensitive to light and is then ready for exposure. Doing so takes about a half hour for a print our image look. In 1844 Fox Talbot opened a photography establishment in Reading in order for him to mass produce his images. In order to make a print the negative was placed on top of more photo paper, laid down flat in a glass frame and then allowed to develop in the light of the sun.
http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/calotype.htm

Orgin of Black and White Photography

Black and White photography is a number of monochrome forms in visual art. Monochrome means one color which is a combination of alone/solitary and color. In 1727 Professor J. Schulze mixed chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask, and stumbled upon the first photosensitive compound ever created. Later on Nicéphore Niépce combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper and created a permanent image in 1826. Black and white dominated photography until about the twentieth century when color photographs became popular. Taking photographs planned in black and white is a lot more difficult than setting up a colored shot. In black and white there are a lot more elements that need to be thought about and carefully planned. Elements such as exposure of light and shadows have a greater effect on black and white photos due to not having a monochromatic picture. The demand for black and white photos and media have reduced since the twentieth century but have more recently become in demand.

http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/the-origins-of-black-and-white-photography-573689.html