We take for granted how easy it is for us to create the perfect photograph. At weddings, holidays and special events we just point our digital cameras or our mobile phones and click. Everything is automatically focused, and the flash comes on if you’ve not enough light.
However, capturing the perfect moment is something that is best left to the professionals and it is easy to search for event photographers and locate a professional in a specific location such as ‘wedding photographer in Bexley’.
It’s hard to believe that the art of photography started with just one man, annoyed that he couldn’t get a picture of an Italian lake. When you see what he had to work with though you’ll see why he invented the camera.
William Henry Fox Talbot is the man. He was not a very skilled artist unlike his wife who could knock out paintings and sketches with great skill. The only way to record the beautiful sites and occasions of the world was if you got your sketch pad out and started scribbling away. Talbot sat down ready to try and capture the beauty of Lake Como in Italy. His wife got her paints out and set about painting the landscape whilst poor Talbot had to rely on a rather clunky instrument known as a “camera obscura” This was a box with a lens in it that projected the image that you wanted to draw onto a piece of glass. The idea was that you would trace the image as it shone through the paper with your pencil then colour it in later if you fancied it.
Seems pretty easy, and it was even if the image you got was a bit basic but as Talbot pointed out as soon as you looked up from the obscura there was no way the simple little pencil lines could match the beauty of the landscape in front of him. He was impressed by how the image was imprinted on the glass though. He wished there was a way of capturing that image on to the glass to keep forever without all this tedious mucking about with pencils and his lack of skill at doing it. Talbot would have loved the images seen at http://www.tylermadephotography.com . In fact, he’d have probably said “yes that’s exactly what I want”.
Talbot went home to England and set about making his dream a reality. He set about using light sensitive paper and chemicals to imprint pictures of leaves and plants pressed between glass. He used better chemicals and changed his paper to a more sensitive variety. He then set about putting the materials in little boxes around his house and grounds. It was a cracking summer and the light was perfect for him to capture some brilliant images.
If you are interested in finding out more about how Fox Talbot revolutionised how we now capture our memories there are many articles written about him.