When the first photo was taken. History of photography in Russia. First photographs and cameras. Of the surviving daguerreotypes

Even some 30-40 years ago, a significant part of photographs, films, TV shows were black and white. Many people do not even realize that color photography appeared much earlier than it became widespread in life. This post is about the development of color photography.

In fact, attempts to obtain color photographs began as early as the middle of the 19th century, shortly after. But the inventors faced a lot of technical difficulties. Apart from just getting a color shot, there were big problems with correct color reproduction. It is precisely because of the various technical difficulties that the widespread introduction of color photography into life has stretched for more than a hundred years. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts, today we can see fairly high quality color photographs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Oldest Self-Portrait Photo: World First

Robert Corneil taking his first self-portrait in front of his family shop. Want to know who made the first person in history? Realizing an interest in chemistry in private schools, Cornelius turned to the American inventor Joseph Saxton to create a silver plate for his daguerreotype. After this initial contact with an as yet unexplored concept of photography, Robert Cornelius wanted to refine the daguerreotype. And who would have guessed that these days.

Just two years after this photo was taken, the Allied Army will use the balloon photo to spy on Confederate troops during the Virginia Peninsula Campaign. The earliest aerial photograph known to exist is a view of Boston called "Boston Like the Eagle and the Wild Goose." There were reportedly aerial photographs taken by a French photographer and aeronaut named Felix Nadar, but his equipment and camera work never made it safe from the air, remaining lost and undocumented.

Plaid Ribbon is considered the world's first color photograph. It was shown by the famous English physicist James Maxwell during a lecture on the peculiarities of color vision at the Royal Institute in London on May 17, 1861.

However, Maxwell did not seriously engage in photography, and the Frenchman Louis Arthur Ducos du Oron became the pioneer of color photography. On November 23, 1868, he patented the first method of obtaining color photographs. The method was rather complicated and involved three-fold shooting of the desired object through light filters, and the desired photograph was obtained after combining three plates of different colors.

New York: Almost 170 years ago

This piece depicts an idyllic scene of the area that will be Manhattan's Upper West Side. Can you imagine all the buildings, traffic and noise from today in this serene landscape? Bayard, the inventor of the process just shown to you.

The first deception in photography: a rather dark prank

The government, which was too generous for Monsieur Daguerre, declared that it could do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch drowned himself. With modern digital tools, it is quite easy to change the image and manipulate the viewer into thinking they are seeing something other than what is actually in the picture. There are so many hoaxes and pranks these days that hardly anyone is cheating, but who was the first to create a hoax photograph? With the battle of rival photography pioneers in full swing, Hippolyte Bayard decided to take it to the next level.

Photographs by Louis Ducos du Oron (1870s)

In 1878, Louis Ducos du Oron presented his collection of color photographs at the World Exhibition in Paris.

In 1873, the German photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel discovered sensitizers - substances that can increase the sensitivity of silver compounds to rays of different wavelengths. Then another German scientist, Adolf Mite, developed sensitizers that make the photographic plate sensitive to different parts of the spectrum. He also designed a three-color camera and a three-beam projector for displaying the resulting color images. This equipment was first demonstrated in action by Adolf Miethe in Berlin in 1902.

His rival Louis Daguerre convinced him not to announce his innovative ideas for the French Academy of Sciences, to which Bayard reacted rather dramatically. Hippolyte Bayard staged a self-portrait of his fake suicide, where he portrayed a drowned man and accused Daguerre and the Academy of being guilty of his untimely death.

In front of Hubble and other space telescopes, this is what the first photograph of the Sun looked like.

Again, using the daguerreotype process, a snapshot was created and produced a rather surprising result where, if you look closely enough, you even notice a few smudges. The naked eye cannot help but perceive the Sun as a strong, shining spot in the sky, so this photograph allowed the viewer to experience a sphere of light at the moment of his captured glory.



Photos by Adolphe Mite (early 20th century)

The pioneer of color photography in Russia was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, who improved the method of Adolf Mite and achieved very high-quality color reproduction. At the beginning of the 20th century, he traveled Russian empire, having made many excellent color photographs (about two thousand of them have reached so far).

Earliest photograph of a tornado: we are no longer in Kansas

Well aware of the value of his image, the author tried to use it by selling card cards and stereograms. At first glance, this photo looks like something straight out of the classic Wizard of Oz movie. Adams, who managed to assemble his box camera and capture the destructive power of nature at a safe distance of 14 miles from the scene.

First news photo: Earliest recorded arrest on camera

Little did he know, he was probably the pioneer of future stormtroopers. The pioneering work of photojournalism. An underlined sense of pride and well-being can be seen on the faces of both the law enforcement officers and the suspect, as if they even realized how historic the moment was. Perhaps someone even shouted: "Smile at the camera!" For the first time.





The photograph in this photograph was of Edinburgh ale, described as "a powerful liquid that almost glued a drunkard's lips together, so few could ship more than a bottle." Ever notice how most people take seriously all their old photos? As if nobody ever smiled or made a funny face for the camera. Of course, the process then was not as simple as pulling yourself together with one hand while drinking in the other. George William Bell having a casual drink together.

He captured a moment of leisure and showed his friends relaxing, drinking and having fun, as most of us are today when we go out and take some pictures with our buddies. All images are used for illustration purposes only.

Its creator is Joseph Nicefort Niépse, who filmed the scene outside the window in Burgundy, France.

Photos by Prokudin-Gorsky (Russia, early 20th century)

Still, it was inconvenient to get one color image out of three, for a color photograph to become a mass photograph, the method had to be simplified. The Lumiere brothers, the famous inventors of cinema, took up this task. In 1907, they demonstrated their Autochrome method, which produced a color image on a glass plate.

Although a revolution has begun in photography, it is important to remember the first photographs of people, news, cities, situations, streets, events, the oldest photograph of our world in general, in history. These are some of the oldest images, some of which are found almost 200 years ago, taken by pioneers of photography such as Louis Daguerre, Hippolyte Bayard, Robert Cornelius and others who have greatly contributed to the development of the environment. This is a view of the Boulevard du Temple, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. The image had a ten minute exposure, so the street appears to be empty even though there were many cars, and the only figure that remained in the same spot long enough to be visible in the photo is the two men in the lower left corner where they seem to be polishing the other's shoes ...

Some of the "autochromes" (early 20th century)

Over the next 30 years, Autochrome became the main method of taking color photographs for the masses, until Kodak developed a more advanced method of color photography.

Featured Image: Robert Cornelius - Self-Portrait

It is also interesting that this is a mirror image, as is often the case with daguerreotypes, also known as the first complete photographic process. Hippolyte Bayard considered himself as important as Louis Daguerre. In fact, he claimed to have invented the photographic process before there was ever a daguerreotype. Only luck was not on his side, as the presentation of his invention was delayed, and Daguerre stole his thunder. On the back, he blamed it all on his opponent and the Academy while creating.

Featured Image: Hippolyte Bayard - Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man

The earliest solar photo is only 4.7 inches, but it is detailed to the point where you can even see sunspots of the Sun. Draper from the Greenwich Village Rooftop Observatory.

Featured Image: First Photo of the Sun

This was probably done to document news. We do not know who the author of this photograph is, as this may be the first image of the arrest. It can now be found in the Orsay Museum.

This photograph, entitled "View from the Window" in 1826, was taken by the discoverer of photography, Joseph Nicephorus Niepce. Shot from an upstairs window at the Niepce estate in Burgundy, France. The image was captured using a process known as heliography.


The first color photo created by physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. This is an image of a three-color bow called Tartan Ribbon (or Plaid Ribbon).

The image was taken through the daguerreotype process and is considered one of the first examples

Recommended image: Old news photo

The earliest photographic aerial photography. Boston is like an eagle and a wild goose. Featured Image: James Wallace Black - Boston as an eagle and a wild goose, this is the oldest aerial photography ever. Featured Image: James Clerk Maxwell - First Color Photo.

Old photo of lightning

Inspired by the idea of \u200b\u200bhis zigzag shape, he set out on a quest to find out if this was indeed the case, and his imagery contributed immensely to further research into the structure of the weather phenomenon.

The earliest photographs from space

Although not human-made, it is still the first photograph to show planet Earth as an object rather than a place. The camera on which the photo was taken used 35mm film, which survived the fall of the camera, returning to Earth at 500 feet per second.


NASA photographers photographed the first launch at Cape Canaveral in July 1950. The Bumper 2 two-stage rocket you see in the shot contained a V-2 rocket (upper stage) and a WAC Corporal (lower stage).


The first digital photograph was taken in 1957; almost 20 years before Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. This is a digital scan of a photograph originally taken on film. It depicts Russell Kirsch's son.

The camera was completely destroyed, but the film and image were preserved. Kirsch, the American engineer who developed the first digital image scanner, looked at a photograph of his three-month-old son and turned him into the first digital photographyever created.

Recommended image: First digital photo

In this photograph, a real technological revolution emerged that completely replaced and digitized chemical processes. The use of cameras allowed us to capture historical moments and change the way we see ourselves and the world... To mark amazing story photography and photographic science, we have collected twenty photographic "firstborn" over the past two centuries.


The first photograph of a person is considered the picture you see above. It was made by Louis Daguerre. The exposure lasted about seven minutes. The shot captures the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. In the lower left corner of the photo you can see a man who stopped to clean his shoes.

The photo was taken from the windows of the topside of the Niépse estate in the Burgundy region of France. This image was captured by a process known as heliography, which used the bitumen of Judea covered with a piece of glass or metal; bitumen than hardened in proportion to the amount of light that hit it.

First photograph of Cape Canaveral

This was done by mathematician-physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The piece above is considered the first solid color photograph and is the envy of Maxwell in a lecture for those with image identification problems, this is a three-color bow. The shot also clearly demonstrates that other photographers are lining up and ready to receive their images of the event.


Robert Cornelius set up his camera and shot the world's first self-portrait while on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. He sat in front of the lens for just over a minute before closing the lens. This historic selfie was taken in 1839.


The first prank photograph was made in 1840 by Hippolyte Bayard, who competed with Louis Daguerre, claiming the title of "father of photography". Bayard was allegedly the first to develop the photographic process, but he delayed reporting his achievement. And the agile Daguerre presented a report on the daguerreotype without mentioning Bayard, who desperately made his self-portrait with a deplorable signature. It said that the inconsolable inventor drowned himself.

The first photograph of a person

A photograph is a digital scan of a photograph originally taken on film. Turned out higher in the picture taken by Louis Daguerre. The exposition lasted about seven minutes and was aimed at capturing the Boulevard du Temple, passage in Paris, France. Due to the long exposure time, many people walked down the street where there was not enough space to impress. However, in the lower left corner of the photo, we can see a man standing and honing his shoes. Further analysis of the picture later found several other numbers - can you find them?

The first aerial photograph was taken from a hot air balloon in 1860. It captures the city of Boston from a height of 610 meters. Photographer James Wallace Black called his work Boston as Seen by the Eagle and the Wild Goose.


The first photograph (daguerreotype) of the Sun was taken by French physicists Louis Fizeau and Foucault Leon on April 2, 1845.

First self-portrait photograph

Before the egoists were furious, Robert Cornelius set up a camera in the back of a business on Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia. Cornelius sat in front of the lens for a little over a minute before leaving the seat and covering the lens. Both Bayard and Louis Daguerre fought for the title of "Father of Photography". Bayard supposedly developed his photography process before Daguerre presented Daguerreotype. However, the announcement of this was delayed, and Daguerre announced this. In a rebellious move, Bayard produced this photograph of a drowned man, claiming that he killed himself due to enmity.


The first photograph from space was taken from a V-2 rocket launched on October 24, 1946. This is a black and white image of the Earth taken with a 35mm camera at an altitude of 104.6 km.


The photojournalist's name is unknown, but this image, taken in 1847, is considered the first news photo. It captures a person who was detained by the police in France.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, became the first head of state to be photographed. The daguerreotype was made in 1843, many years after Adams left office.