Photography is an intrinsic part of our daily lives. From our first waking moment we are bombarded with photographs of all kinds in every conceivable context. Our consumer decisions are, they would have us believe, informed by “aspirational” advertising images, and the products we buy employ photography in their packaging to reinforce our confidence that we have spent our money wisely.
-150 Projects to Strengthen Your Photographic Skills by John Easterby
Photography plays a major part in keeping us informed of world events, telling us where we should go for our vacations or which poor soul had gone “missing.” So ubiquitous (found everywhere) is the still image that it has been estimated that on average we are bombarded with over 40,000 photographs every single day. Spend 10 minutes on the Internet and you’ll probably see hundreds of photographs and remember none of them.
Within the space of a little over a century, the photograph has evolved from being a thing of wonder, whose processes were viewed as a kind of alchemy, to something that is so commonplace we sometimes barely take notice.
In this photo-laden environment the public are not only consumers of photographs but producers too. Whereas in the past it was not uncommon for a single film from the family camera to contain photographs from two different summer vacations (“I didn’t see the point in processing it yet, there were still 10 shots left…”), the situation today is one where the vast majority of people carry a cell phone and with it, the possibility to shoot, edit, and distribute photographs on the move at will.
The serious contemporary photographer operates in a world full of images and full of photographers, where everyone is potentially a photographer with an exclusive image. -150 Projects to Strengthen Your Photographic Skills by John Easterby
Within the space of a little over a century, the photograph has evolved from being a thing of wonder, whose processes were viewed as a kind of alchemy, to something that is so commonplace we sometimes barely take notice.
In this photo-laden environment the public are not only consumers of photographs but producers too. Whereas in the past it was not uncommon for a single film from the family camera to contain photographs from two different summer vacations (“I didn’t see the point in processing it yet, there were still 10 shots left…”), the situation today is one where the vast majority of people carry a cell phone and with it, the possibility to shoot, edit, and distribute photographs on the move at will.
The serious contemporary photographer operates in a world full of images and full of photographers, where everyone is potentially a photographer with an exclusive image. -150 Projects to Strengthen Your Photographic Skills by John Easterby
Timeline of the History of Photography
Camera obscura & Leonardo DiVinci |
1800
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Thomas Wedgwood
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