Photography: art, technology, passion, and a decisive moment
Picture: copyright by Triwibowo Yuwono.
Photography is not simply a display of beautiful and eye-catching pictures. It is a work of art, technology, passion, and as Henry Cartier Bresson stated: a decisive moment. The word "photography" derived from the Greek word, photos (light), and graphein (to draw), was first used in 1830s (Britannica Encyclopedia). Photography is rooted from a simple technology, called as camera obscura, which is a dark chamber or room with a hole through which images are projected on to the wall. The hole is later replaced by the lens to focus the image and captured on a media which is then processed to give an image of an object in front of the lens. For the more detail historical background of photography, please read the following link: https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography.
Photography has now developed from a very simple technological innovation of capturing light and image through a hole (camera obscura) to digital-based photography. Photography is also moving from an exclusive art of preserving images by professional photographer to a daily activity of many ordinary people using their hand-held gadget, such as smartphone. Prior to the development of digital photography, photography involves at least two different activities: capturing the image through a camera, then followed by developing the image preserved in a media (film, plate) to the picture that can be visualised (printing the photo). Nowadays, there is no need to develop the photo in dark room just to see how the image taken with camera will appear. Viewing the picture right after the image is taken can simply be done on a small screen of a handphone, fir example. Editing the photographs is now a very simple task, many smartphone are equipped with the software to edit the picture directly on the gadget. Thus, making a picture is now a very easy task, compared to previous era when the picture can only de developed in dark room by a technically-trained person. The picture taken using smartphone can now be easily transferred thousand kilometres away to different part of the world through the internet network.
The history of digital photography began with Eugene F. Lally of Jet Propulsion Laboratory who, in 1961, developed the idea of using mosaic photosensor to capture digital images. In 1972, a Texas Instrument employee, Willis Adcocks received a US patent of filmless camera. However, the real digital camera was first developed in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, using charge-coupled device image sensor. The first digital camera weighed about 3.6 kg and had only 0.01 megapixels resolution, which is very small compared to currently available digital camera which has tens of megapixels resolution. Even, the simple handphone now has several megapixels of resolution. The image of the first digital camera was recorded on a cassette tape and took 23 seconds to record ! Just compare with the latest smartphone which can record images of several images per second (burst mode).
The advancement of photography technology is also accompanied by the development of photo editing softwares which is capable of modifying almost any aspect of photography itself, from lighting to colour changes. Through the advancement of photo editing software technology, photography has entered into a new phase whereby technology may override the personal touch of a photographer. The analog photography requires the know-how and the art of photography, and sometimes even requires the personal sensitivity, as the result of the shutter click will not be obvious until the film or plate is processed to give the printed picture. By using digital camera or smartphone, anyone can make a shot and view directly the result and, if necessary, make editing or changes right on the camera or smartphone. Or, alternatively, throw away the picture if it does not give personal satisfaction. The use of advanced photo editing software has brought photography even further to a level which is beyond imagination when the world of photography was still dominated by analog photography. Therefore, traditional values of analog photography, such as colour balance, composition, are the matters of the past. We can alter the colour balance, and even composition after the picture is taken, and remove the unwanted part of the image easily. Learning photography nowadays is is not only referring to learning the art of photography itself, but also refers to learning the technology to modify the picture. Does it mean that photography lost its artistic values ? Not really, yet it is more the blending of art and technology, in which the balance between art and technology is becoming thinner. However, passion is one of the remaining traditional values that becomes the centre of photography. Without passion, photography is reduced to simply capturing the image, not the soul of the image, or the inner feeling of the event that becomes the soulful source of the image.
