The Evolution of Photography – The Beginning
Photography! Who could have thought that we would now be able to take pictures through a digital camera and transfer to a computer and change the colors or any of the attributes of an image or a photograph? Digital cameras are sharper and provide high quality pictures that can be used over multiple mediums. Sir John Herschel is a man who invented the term ‘Photography’ in 1839. This was also the year when the process of Photography was unveiled to the public.

How did photography really evolve? Well! It is the bi-product of laws of physics and compounds of chemistry. The evolution of photography is a completely scientific process starting with the use of optics in the 1830’s.  The dark room or Camera Obscura existed some four hundred years back, while cameras were being used since the 11th century and yet photography did not come into public use before the 1830’s.

There were different observations made by several people that finally led to putting together of all the missing pieces and this also announced the advent of photography. Some of those important observations are:

• In the 15th century, Robert Boyle found out that silver chloride turned dark when exposed to air and not light.
• In the early 1800’s Angelo Sala observed that when silver nitrate powder is kept in the sun for long, it turns black.
• Around 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze made a discovery regarding colors. There were some liquids that changed their colors when they were exposed to light
• Thomas Wedgwood conducted some experiments in the early 19th century. He had captured images but could make the images permanent.
• The first ever successful production of a photograph emerged in the June-July of 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The material used for this became hard when exposed to light for almost 8 hrs. Niépce went into a partnership with Louis Daguerre on 4th Jan, 1829 to work further on this.

Four years later in 1833, Niépce died and Daguerre continued alone to discover how to develop photographic plates. Invention of the photographic plates meant that the exposure time was reduced considerably, from 8 hrs to 30 minutes. He also made another important observation and the conclusion drawn was that immersing an image in salt would make it permanent. Paul Delaroche, a leading French scholar made a report on this and the French government bought the rights in July 1839, and made it public on 19th Aug, 1839. This process was named Daguerreotype after Louis Daguerre.

The Daguerreotype process was expensive and one time affair. At that time there were no negatives available and hence the original photograph could not be reproduced. The only way of getting two copies was by using two cameras side by side. This led to the growing need of finding a way to copy pictures and finally led to the invention of the Calotype process by William Henry Fox Talbot. Although the Daguerreotype was superior to the Calotype, the latter was able to provide multiple positive prints of a single picture in 1840.

This was the calling of a new dawn!

Fine art photography is not necessarily capturing a specific technique or style, it is an issue of self expression.  If you want to emulate a certain style that you are aware of, study it and try to recreate it, eventually you will be able to produce beautiful images in the likes of an Ansel Adams or a Diane Arbus.  Seriously, it’s generally possible to achieve.  Why? Because by doing so you aren’t creating anything more than what’s done before. 

But copying someone else’s style is not what fine art photography is about.  It’s about creating your own style, having your own voice.  In most cases, the person creating their work early in their artistic careers does even understand who or what their voice is.  Also in most cases, that understanding of self evolves over your entire lifetime and transitions with you.  Look up any artist and view their work throughout their lives and you will begin to understand that process.

If you want to create fine art imagery, you have to move beyond the technical aspects of the camera, as technology will not get your there.  Buying the ‘best’ camera, or the latest gadget, will do nothing to make you a good photographer.  In fact, many photographers fall in love with inferior cameras, such as the Holga, old Polaroids, and pinhole cameras.  It is your eye that is ultimately the only important tool, everything else is just a means of bringing that vision into being.

Of course, understanding your equipment is very important.  If you don’t understand the basics, you will never be able to use them to your advantage.  Read your camera’s manual and learn as much as you can about how it works and what features it has.  All of them will be useful to you at one point or another.

Fine art photography is the process of seeing and recording that vision into something that can be shared, preserved.  One of the best exercises for this is the single-subject assignment.

Take one object.  It can be anything – a toy, a book, your home, car, or a tree – anything that is stationary.  Do not chose an animal or another person, chose something that cannot move on its own.  For an entire month spend a portion of every day photographing that same object.  Each time, try to find something new about it.  Try photographing it from a new different angle, or using a different technique.

Each day will get a bit harder, but each day will also fore you to think differently, especially armed with the knowledge that some things have been done before, and by you. Take time to reflect on every image you’ve taken.  Review them, study your work and see what you like, and what you didn’t like.  Use that information to try something new.  Experiment as much as you can. There are endless ways of looking at an object, if you think you’ve run out of ideas, think harder. Or try recreating a composition you’ve already created and see if you can re-create that same image (it’s actually quite hard to do so).

This will help you being your process of seeing.  It will only happen if you open your mind and be receptive to what you are telling yourself in a realistic and practical way.
Once you develop the understanding of seeing, you can apply this to virtually every area of your work.  You will be able to literally walk around and see images.  With so many possible opportunities, you can then begin the process of matching the right angle, composition and style to your own voice and vision.  Between the two, you will create images that will be unforgettable to you and to anyone who you share your work with.

Commanding Exposure

Most cameras in use today have a built-in light meter that examines the light reflected by the subject you're framing in the viewfinder. Understanding how this light meter reads the scene is crucial to making successful, well-exposed photographs the majority of the time you shoot.

The Average Dilemma

Your camera's light meter bases all of its exposure settings on 18% gray, an "average" tone somewhere in the middle between light and darkness. This is great for a majority of picture taking situations and is the reason the light meter is calibrated in this fashion. Understanding this gives you the ability to make an educated decision about whether to go with your camera's suggested exposure or to override it.

Watch out for the exceptions.

Subjects that are lighter or darker than "average" fool your camera and ultimately lead to exposure errors that can ruin even the most well composed photograph. Always consider the tone of your subject or it will come back to haunt you!

Exposure Strategies

Look for an average tone.

If you find an average tone that is in the same light as your subject, take a meter reading from it and lock that reading in your camera (read your camera's instruction manual for details on locking the exposure) then recompose the shot to include your subject. Fortunately for the outdoor photographer average tones abound: tree trunks, most rocks, green foliage and even most skin tones qualify.

Use a gray card.

Available at most camera stores, the gray card is just that, a card that is coated with a calibrated 18% gray tone often available in a variety of sizes. Take your meter reading off of this card but be sure that the card is in the same light as your subject. For obvious reasons, this is not always an option when photographing wildlife or other elusive subjects.

Use exposure compensation.

Most cameras have this feature which allows you to adjust the camera's built-in light meter reading. For subjects lighter than average "add"e; exposure by setting the dial to plus 1/2 or plus 1 stop (or more depending on the subject). Darker than average subjects require a minus setting (some cameras have a chart that goes from -2 stops to +2 stops with intervals of a 1/2 or 1/3 stop).
Bracket.

Extra insurance for tricky lighting situations and subjects. Bracketing your exposure means shooting over and under the exposure setting recommended by the camera (or the one you've set manually). This can be crucial when shooting slide film where even minor exposure errors can result in an unusable image.

Copyright © Justin W. Moore. All Rights Reserved.
m-toned, evenly lit subject requires no exposure compensation. This photograph was taken using the camera's built-in auto-exposure system.
300mm IS lens, 1/125 second at f4.0 (ISO 100)

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born to a wealthy merchant family, in 1908, Chanteloup-en-Brie, near Paris and was raise in the prevailing bourgeois fashion. He was a willful young boy, who refused to be groomed to take over the family business. Instead he decided to study art, having being introduced by his uncle who was a noted painter. At the age of 19, he enrolled at Lhote Academy, a private art school owned and run by Andre Lhote, a painter and sculptor as well as studying portraiture with Jacques Emile Blanche. Henri Cartier-Bresson had a love for both renaissance and contemporary art.

In 1924, the emerging surrealistic style impacted on his art. In the interim, Cartier-Bresson went to study English Art & Literature at the University of Cambridge, and became quite fluent in the language.

Henri Cartier-Bresson then completed the compulsory military service, near Paris and then went to seek adventure in French colonial Africa, where he contract blackwater fever, nearly ending his life. Only seven of the photos he took with a portable camera, in Cote d’Ivoire, actually survived the humidity of the tropics. Whilst recuperating in Marseilles in 1931, he saw a photograph taken by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkasci - the photograph of three young African boys, running into Lake Tanganyika, that he realized the potential of photography to expressed artistic truth. The spontaneity is what really caught his eye and put him on the path to discovery. It made him rush out with his camera, to see what he could catch on camera, in the same essence of spontaneity.

Henri Cartier-Bresson traveled to Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Madrid capturing everything that caught his eye, using an inconspicuous portable Leica camera. His photographs were exhibited at in New York, at the Julien Levy Gallery, and then in Madrid. He traveled to Mexico, in 1934 and met up with Mexican photographer Manual Alverez Bravo with whom a shared an exhibition. He returned to New York in 1935, with Bravo to share an exhibition with fellow photographer Walker Evans. Many other opportunities were presented whilst in the US and even had a number of his photos published in the Harpers Bazaar, through Carmel Snow.

On his return to France in 1936, Cartier-Bresson applied for a job with Jean Renoir, the famed French film director who put him into two of his films as an actor to give him the exposure needed for him to understand relationships between photographer and the subject. Henri Cartier-Bresson was quite active as a leftist during WW2, and was captured by Germans and spent 35 months as a prisoner of war. He attempted three escapes, and was put in solitary confinement on two occasions, with the third attempt he succeeded.

In 1947, Magnum Photos was formed as a cooperative photo agency with Cartier-Bresson being one of the founding members along with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger.He achieved international recognition in 1948, after covering the funeral of the great Mahatma Gandhi in India and then went on to photograph the last of the Grand Imperial Eunuchs of Beijing China, as the transition from Imperial States to the of Communism unfolded..
Henri Cartier-Bresson published books, Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson and The Decisive Moment, the finally retired from photography in the early 1970s to pursue his love of drawing and painting.

Henri Cartier-Bresson covered more important historical moments that any other photographer of the 20th Century. He, being an intensely private perhaps refused to be photographed being quite camera shy. There are few public pictures of Cartier-Bresson that exist. Henri Cartier-Bresson married twice, and had a daughter with his second wife photographer Martine Franck in 1970. He died in 2004 at the age of 95, having left quite a legacy.