2. An enthusiastic and experienced
photographer, Mark W. Decker uses the latest
in modern equipment to capture his images.
However, he also understands that one
cannot take the art of photography into the
future without first knowing its past. Because
of this, Mark W. Decker has studied the
history of photography, starting with the very
earliest uses of the camera obscura.
3. The first permanent photographic image
produced by mankind was the creation of the
French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.
Using a technique that he called
heliography, he used an eight-hour exposure
time to produce a picture of his countryside
estate in 1826.
4. By 1839, the Daguerrotype was quickly rising to
prominence across the world. Produced by a layer
of photosensitive chemicals on a bright silver
surface, Daguerrotype images could be captured
in minutes rather than hours and could be either
positive or negative, depending on lighting
conditions and background color. Although it
produced relatively clear images, the
Daguerrotype process only produced one image
at a time, and the images were delicate and easily
scratched or damaged.
5. In the 1870s, photographers began using a new
innovation called the gelatin dry plate. This allowed
them to expose plates out in the field and then bring
them back to a dark room for chemical developing.
The end result of this process was paper negatives
that could then be used to make positive paper
prints.
The final technological revolution of photography in
the 1880s occurred when Kodak founder George
Eastman converted the preprocessed plate into a
flexible roll of sheets that could be mounted inside of
the camera and developed internally. His invention
allowed almost anyone to become an amateur
photographer.
