photography

Noun

photography (uncountable)

1. The art and technology of producing images on photosensitive surfaces, and its digital counterpart.
2. The occupation of taking (and often printing) photographs.

Derived terms

• digital photography
• flash photography
• glamour photography

Related terms

• photographer
• photographic
• phonography

Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Photography uses foremost radiation in the UV, visible and near-IR spectrum. For common purposes the term light is used in stead of radiation. Light reflected or emitted from objects form a real image on a light sensitive area (film or plate) or a FPA pixel array sensor by means of a pin hole or lens in a device known as a camera during a timed exposure. The result on film or plate is a latent image, subsequently developed into a visual image (negative or diapositive). An image on paper base is known as a print. The result on the FPA pixel array sensor is an electrical charge at each pixel which is electronically processed and stored in a computer (raster)-image file for subsequent display or processing. Photography has many uses for business, science, manufacturing (f.i. Photolithography), art, and recreational purposes.

As far as can be ascertained, it was Sir John Herschel in a lecture before the Royal Society of London, on March 14, 1839 who made the word "photography" known to the whole world. But in an article published on February 25 of the same year in an unknown and quite anonymous newspaper called the Vossische Zeitung, Johann von Maedler, a Berlin astronomer, used the word photography already. The word photography is based on the Greek φῶς (photos) "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".

Photography is...

• "the art of frozen time... the ability to store emotion and feelings within a frame" -- Meshack Otieno

• "an austere and blazing poetry of the real" -- Ansel Adams
• "the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision" -- Sebastian Smee

• "a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality" -- Alfred Stieglitz
• "the dominant and fascinating and only folk art of the twentieth century" -- Sir John Rothenstein
• "(a means by which we)...learn to see the ordinary" -- David Bailey
• "a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere ..." -- John Szarkowski
• "my meditation" -- Czar Anthony Lopez
• "a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment...and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival." -- Eliot Porter
• "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression." -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

A camera...

• "is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera" -- Dorothea Lange
• "has interesting ideas of its own" -- John Szarkowski.

A photograph is...

• "The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you’re supposed to look through it. It's a window." -- John Szarkowski.

On creativity

• “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." -- Ansel Adams

• “My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.” -- Edward Weston

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Fri Sep 3 02:16:47 2010