History of Photography

Many people use photography whether it being for professional photography as a job or to capture those precious moments in time with special people.

Photography started a long time ago in the 5th century. But the first reports were in ancient times when people used camera obscuras. These formed images on walls in blacked out rooms and the images would be seen on the opposite wall to where the pinhole is made. But the image would be seen upside down.

In 1816 Nicephore Niepce had a break through and introduced photosensitive paper to the camera obscuras. It wasn't until 1826 with many different experiments that he managed to create a permanent image. He did this by using asphaltum on a copper plate which was sensitised with lavender oil but this process needed very long exposure times. Louis Daguerre worked in conjunction with Niepce but before they could find a way to make a shorter exposure times Niepce passed away. Louis Daguerre then carried on on his own and managed to invent the Daguerreotype. The Daguerreotype was usually used for portraits, this was because it had a dark surface which is reflected into a mirrored silver surface and the reproduction is extremely detailed. This was a big step forward at the time and brings us closer to the photography we know today.

Daguerre Vs Talbot

At the same time Louis Daguerre was experimenting with different ideas, William Henry Fox Talbot was as well. Both of them knew that who ever created the idea first and was more effective would revolutionize the industry. While Louis Daguerre was experimenting the the daguerreotype, Talbot was working on his idea, the calotype process which was also named the talbotype. It is done by using paper coated in silver iodine. When it gets exposed to the light the silver iodine decomposes and the excess iodine gets washed away after oxidising. Talbot was a noted photographer who made big contributions to the photographic world.

George Eastman was the next photographer which made the biggest change to the industry. George was born in 1854 and passed away in 1932. It was in 1884 that he discovered the technology of film. He became the founder of Kodak, the company we know today. He named the company 'Kodak' because it was something original and different that didn't have any other meanings. In 1888 the first kodak camera was released. It contained a 20ft roll of paper. This was enough for 100 2.5inch diameter circular images. The year after kodak improved the camera so it used a roll of film instead of paper.

From then on many photographers were adapting and inproving film cameras.

In 1990 Adobe Photoshop was released. This then meant that photographers were able to digitally manipulate their image . This could simply just be editing little glitches which makes the photograph look more perfect or it could make photos look abstract by changing colours etc. 

The first camera phone was introduced in 2000. This made it easier for many people to take photos as it was cheaper than buying a camera and more acessible than carrying a camera around with you all the time.

Four years later after this Kodak ceases the production of film cameras and focused on digital cameras. This is how we know photography today and if we look back at the history, we can see how far photography has come since camera obscuras.

Photographers Mentioned:

• Nicéphore Niépce (Joseph Niépce) - French, Born March 7th 1765 and died on July 5th 1833.

• Louis Daguerre (Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre) - French, Born November 18th 1787 and died on July 10th 1851.

• William Henry Fox Talbot - English, born on February 11th 1800 and died on September 17th 1877.

• George Eastman - American, Born on July 12th 1854 and died on March 14th 1932.

Explore and Experiment - Skills

For my skills unit i am going to create a music video. We have been given 4 music tracks put our music video to. For this I worked with Hayley Greet and we both decided with 'Pack Up' by Eliza Doolitlle. We chose this because it was the most up beat and happy sounding song out of the 4.

Eliza Doolittle

Eliza Sophie Caird was born on 15th April 1988 in Westminster, London, United Kingdom.

She is a singer-songwriter, her genres of music include pop, folk, soul and ska. And she is currently signed to the Parlophone record label.

http://www.elizadoolittle.com/

Lyrics for Pack Up:
I get tired
And upset
And i’m trying to care a little less
When i google i only get depressed
I wast taught to dodge those issues I was told
Don’t worry
There’s no doubt
There’s always something to cry about
When you’re stuck in an angry crowd
They don’t think what they say before they open their mouths
(chorus)
Pack up your troubles in you old kit bag
And bury them beneath the sea
I don’t care what the people may say
What the people may say about me
Pack up your troubles get your old grin back
Don’t worry ’bout the cavalry
I don’t care what the whisperers say
Cos’ they whisper too loud for me.

Hot topic
Maybe I should drop it
It’s a touchy subject
and I like to tiptoe round the tiff goin’ down
You got penny, but no pound
your business is running out
‘not my business to talk about
They don’t think what they say before they open their mouths.
(Chorus)
Tweet tweet
tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet
tweet
(chorus)
Yeahh yeah yeah
yeah yeah
yeah
(dibadabadodooo)

This is a link to the original music video for her song Pack Up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TsnQya30yo

Ideas
We then listened to the lyrics and tried to understand what the meaning of the song was about and we realised that it is about someone who used to worry about what everyone thought about her but now she doesn't care and she thinks its alright to be herself and different from the crowd.
This is a mind map of our very first ideas and what the song made us think about:

The lyrics that Hayley and I responded to the most were the chorus 'Pack up your troubles in you old kit bag, And bury them beneath the sea' and it made us think of someone digging up the sand with a bucket and spade. This then expanded to a beach theme, we thought about all the possible fun shots that we could create at the beach, an example of this was writing the lyrics of the chorus in the sand, we then developed this idea further and thought about writing it near the sea so that it will come up and wash them away. But then we thought about the seasons and it being october it would be very cold to shoot on the beach and it wouldn't be very sunny so the shots would look rather dull. We could also shoot it as a family video to make it look that bit more fun and relaxed.
Another of our ideas was having the video relate to the lyrics so the first 2 lines are 'I get tired and upset' so the visual is someone waking up and looking really upset. I think this would look effective but there would be a lot of shots to shoot.

Final Idea

The music video is going to be about a girl (who is representing Eliza Doolittle) who used to get bullied and was self-conscious, but she’s turned it around and is now not afraid to be different and stand out from the crowd. To show this we are going have a crowd of ‘Popular/Cool people’ in most of the shots to show that she does stand out but she’s not bothered. This is my interpretation of the meaning of the lyrics.

For the chorus’ we are going to set up a green-screen and get our actor to look as if she’s having fun and laughing and it’s ok to be yourself. This doesn’t link in with the lyrics of the chorus but this is sometimes what other pop music videos do and it is quite effective. We have asked the drama student to act in the music video and they have agreed to do it. It is going to be set around Penwith college because this is the easiest place to do it and where all the equipment we need is. It also is where the storyline is going to happen in real life situations. The costumes are going to be normal clothes as this is what you would wear at college, but the main character is going to wear bright colours and it will contrast well with the other people wearing dull colours and will make it easier to focus on the main character. The target audience is for anyone as the situation can happen anywhere and to anyone, but it is mainly for secondary school and college people as this is where people will get bullied or feel self-conscious about standing out from the crowd.

We are using the camera so that the focus is always on the main character so when the audience watch the music video they will feel like they are going on the journey with the main character. We are only going to use lighting while shooting the green-screening. But in all our other shots we are going to use the natural light that is available to make it look more real.

We are going to use a number of different shots to make the music video more interesting to watch. We are going to use Medium shots, Long shots and an extreme long shot. We aren’t going to use zoom because it’s not needed in these shots.

We aren't able to do the green-screen shots so we are going to have to improvise. So far we have come up with the idea of using photographs we have already taken, as we are both interested in Photography. So far we have photos at home of St. Michael's mount, beaches, flowers etc. On Thursday 21st we are going to try and shoot the rest of the shots that we haven't yet shot and also re-shoot the shoots that didn't work very well. For example the one on the stairs didn't work well because it was overexposed because of all the light coming through the windows.


Health and Safety/ Risk Assessments
When we put together out music video we will need to take into consideration the actors safety. There is a shot where our main character played by Saffron Jones walks along the chair that are in a row. Before she does this we will need to make sure that all the chairs are stable and are in a straight enough row so she cant fall of them as easily. Also we need to ask permission to use the actors in our music video so they aren't doing anything against there own will. We could collect their names on a sheet saying that they have agreed to work in our music video but because they are all doing the performing arts side of the course so we didn't do this.

Equipment needed for our music video

• Film
• Camera
• Hat/Cap
• Table and Chairs (already in the canteen)
• Netball and Hoop etc. (already in Porthcurnow)

Improvement and Development

If we were to do this again i would try and shoot as much footage at once as possible, also it would have helped if we found out the length of the song before we started shooting so that we knew how much footage to get all together. Also i think that it would have looked slightly more professional if we had used a tripod as the video was slightly shaky at times. But the reason we didn't use it at the time was because it was quicker to shoot without it as we didn't have to keep sorting it out for each shot. I think that