Since 1825, we have been fascinated with photos. Joseph Nicephone Niepsce took the official first photo. The photo was of a Flemish engraving of a man leading a horse. Remarkably it took 8 hours to expose the shot. Can you imagine pointing a camera at anything for 8 hours to get a shot. Of course this shot was of an inanimate object and I am sure Joseph was not sitting behind the camera the whole time. It was in 1837 that the first photo was ever taken of a person. It was taken on a street in Paris by Louis Daguerre and was of a man getting a shoe shine. This time it took several minutes to expose it, a great improvement from 1825, but still a long time to capture a moving image. In, 1839 Daguerre agreed to be compensated in exchange for his technology. Glass plates were what was used in early cameras, but in1884, George Eastman developed the first film that today’s technology for film mimics to this day.
Until the mid 1800’s all photographs were black and white. They were called monochromatic but really were not only black and white. The Cyanotype process used back then produced hues of blue and white and the Albumen process produced brown tones that we now know and love as sepia. Even though we moved to color photos in the mid 1800’s, it was not permanent. The color tended to fade over time. In 1861 the first permanent color image was taken by James Clerk Maxwell.
We have come a long way since then. Digital technology take fractions of a second to capture and image and we can see it instantly in the camera on the LCD screen. We can share photos with friends across the globe with image hosting services with just one link. Upload photos just once to a hosting service and get a link to show everyone. Make sure to choose a safe site that is secure. Upload one or many photos, edit photos on the fly, use photo blogging, write comments or accept comments and produce slide shows to share with everyone. Using a remote server saves space on your hard drive and protects against hard drive crashes. Our love for photos dates back to our ancestors and to this day is more popular than ever. Now we have the option to show our photos to our loved ones in an instant.
