Celebrating 175 years of pictures

“Boulevard du Temple”, a daguerreotype made by Louis Daguerre in 1838, is generally accepted as the earliest photograph of people. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes, the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one apparently having his boots polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is an old adage which refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterises one of the main goals of visualisation, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly.

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film, or electronically by means of an image sensor.

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. The result in an electronic image sensor is an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing.

The result in a photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically developed into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

Visual

World Photo Day is about celebrating the ability we have to communicate through this powerful visual medium.

Today, we can share memories across the globe in seconds. Photography is an invention that has revolutionised the way we see the world. We can visit places without leaving home. We can share adventures with friends in another city and we can watch grandchildren grow up thousands of kilometres away.

World Photo Day 2014, celebrated on August 19 marks a special anniversary for photographers across the globe. It marks the 175th anniversary of the first permanent photographic process patented and freely released to the world on August 19th, 1839.

This year, World Photo Day is encouraging businesses, organisations and social groups across the world to leverage the power of photography by engaging their communities as part of a global photography celebration held over August.

“So often, we forget that there was once a time that we couldn’t instantly share moments with friends and family across the globe”, said Korske Ara, founder of World Photo Day. “Today, we take photography for granted.”

Popular

The first commercially available 35mm film camera was developed only 90 years ago. The digital camera became popular just 20 years ago and 15 years ago, camera phones didn’t exist. Today, everyone is impacted by the influence of photography.

Invented in the early decades of the 19th century, photography by means of the camera seemed able to capture more detail and information than traditional media, such as painting and sculpture. Photography dates to the 1820s with the discovery of chemical photography. The first permanent photoetching was an image produced in 1822 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed in a later attempt to make prints from it.

Niépce was successful again in 1825. He made the View from the Window at Le Gras’ the earliest surviving photograph from nature (i.e., of the image of a real-world scene, as formed in a camera obscura by a lens), in 1826 or 1827.

Niépce died in 1833 and Daguerre then redirected the experiments toward the light-sensitive silver halides, which Niépce had abandoned many years earlier because of his inability to make the images he captured with them light-fast and permanent. Daguerre’s efforts culminated in what would later be named the daguerreotype process, the essential elements of which were in place in 1837.

Earliest

The Daguerreotype wasn’t the first permanent photographic image. In 1826, Nicèphore Nièpce captured the earliest known permanent photograph known as ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ using a process called Heliography.

August 19th, 1839 was chosen as the date behind World Photo Day based on the following historical merits:

In 2009, Korske Ara, a passionate young photographer from Australia launched the World Photo Day Project with the dream to unite local and global communities in a worldwide celebration of photography.

On August 19, 2010, World Photo Day hosted it’s first global online gallery. With 270 photographs shared and website visitors from over 100 countries, this marked the first official, globally reaching World Photo Day.

Since the launch of the project, we’ve heard from people that have been celebrating photography on August 19 in their local communities prior to 2010. There’s also evidence of an attempt to start a June 1 photography celebration in 2005.

In 1826, French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, took that photograph, titled View from the Window at Le Gras’ at his family’s country home. Niépce produced his photo - a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window - by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera
obscura for several hours on his windowsill.

“I believe that photography has the power to tell stories, inspire generations and initiate change in the world,” says Korske Ara, Founder of World Photo Day.

Celebration

Founded in 2009, World Photo Day hosted its first global, online gallery in 2010 with the goal to unite local and global communities in a worldwide celebration of photography. Since its initial launch, The World Photo Day project has grown from an idea into a global event as photographers around the globe have joined the celebration.

Whether you own a Compact, Digital SLR, Film or Phone Camera, World Photography Day is all about celebrating photography. World Photography Day is an open community event focused on celebrating photography not just globally but within local communities.

The annual awards gala and ceremony takes place in London, welcoming an international attendance of industry leaders to celebrate the recognition of the best in contemporary photography and each year also pays tribute to one of our masters with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award.