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Declan O'Neill is a professional photographer who lives in the South Island, New Zealand. He travels extensively capturing the beauty of New Zealand's extraordinary landscape. The photographs which accompany this article are part of a series entitled 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' which is dedicated to the memory of his sister, Ann, who died from Multiple Systems Atrophy.
1. Our photographs tell us what is important to us

When you ask people what possessions they would rescue from their burning house, one of the most frequent answers is the photograph album or a computer with their digital images. When in panic mode it's interesting that we would probably grab photos rather than valuable jewelry. This impulse to save our recorded memories is a powerful force which tells us much about the role of photography in our lives and our constant desire to distil our most precious moments into images.

We preserve the important events and people in our lives. The ceremonies of birth and birthdays, marriages and anniversaries, holidays and new houses are all recorded because they matter. Photographs are our personal story, a timeline of our lives filled with faces and places that we love. They are our story, which we can share with others. The hundreds of images come together to form a narrative of our lives.

2. Photographs are part of our legacy

Once I remember sitting in a train as it passed a playground where children were standing to attention for the annual school photograph. Across the front row sat the teachers and behind them, hundreds of children neatly preened and uniformed. For the briefest second the entire assembly was motionless. We were passing just as the photographer clicked the shutter. Suddenly, as if in slow motion, the huge group scattered as children escaped their enforced immobility. The neat rows dissolved and broke into individuals who were now kicking footballs or huddled in friendship groups. None of those children realised that the photograph was probably going to outlive them. A couple of generations later it might surface among old papers in an attic and someone would search for granddad among the fresh young faces. Photographs matter because they freeze moments of our lives which pass unremarkably and which seem to have little importance to us at the time. The significance, however, may be for others who search for the person we once were or the places we once knew. They can be small pieces of a jigsaw that complete the larger picture of our lives.

3. Photographs allow us to share and to communicate.

Images are much more than a simple record. Photography speaks to the best and most generous part of our human nature - the desire to share what we find beautiful and interesting with others. You only have to look at Flickr and a multitude of photo sharing sites to see this impulse at work. Millions of people sharing their personal, passionate and sometimes quirky take on the world around them. Our images can involve a world of strangers in our life. How powerful is that?

4. Photography makes us artists

Photography allows us to express ourselves through an art form. We notice a beautiful landscape or an old man's lined face and we want to capture it. Each of us will have a different reason to do so but, essentially, we want to create something. However humdrum our nine-to-five lives may be, the creation of an image makes us an artist. It feels good.

5. Photography is a complex language

Our images can express joy and sorrow, wonder and sympathy. Every human emotion can find a place in photography. For many years I never valued my photographs of overcast landscape because I believed that there was no beauty in a land with muted colours and a leaden sky. I wanted the land to be alive with colour and vibrancy. However, lack of colour in a landscape makes you search for other things that often go unremarked in bright sunlight. It could be a symmetry of hills or a tree standing out from a forest of thousands. I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life and photography gave me a language to express feelings for which I can find no words. We have a miserably poor vocabulary for mental illness and photography has allowed me to develop a visual language for some of the most difficult emotions.

6. Photography has the power to move us

Photographs can grab our attention and speak directly to our emotions. Nick Ut's photograph of a crying Vietnamese girl whose clothes have been burnt away by napalm embodies the power of a single image. At a more subtle level, we can learn lessons about a whole range of emotions. Grief has the power to wash away the luminance and chrominance of our lives. There is no magic way to restore them at will. We have to be patient. But while waiting we can search for the shapes and patterns that are still there in the greyness. They will lead us back to colour eventually. At moments of great sorrow in my life I have used images to express that hope of returning colour.

Photography, at its best, is a powerful language which speaks to our emotions. It allows us to tell our story and show others our framing of the world around us.
Declan O'Neill is a professional photographer living in the South Island of New Zealand.
site:www.newzealandlandscape.com

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Declan O'Neill is a professional photographer who lives in the South Island, New Zealand. He travels extensively capturing the beauty of New Zealand's extraordinary landscape. The photographs which accompany this article are part of a series entitled 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' which is dedicated to the memory of his sister, Ann, who died from Multiple ...

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Nicéphore Niépce - Heliography - The Inventor of Photography

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Nicéphore Niépce (born Joseph) was the first to successfully experiment with photography and set foundations for future experimenters and photographers. His photographs needed long time of exposure but could be fixed to last in light without darkening.

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Joseph Nicephora Niepce was a French inventor. His first photograph was taken in 1816 but it is no longer around. The University of Texas-Austin has his photograph from 1826 or 1827.

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These days, thanks to smartphones, almost everyone has a camera with them at any given moment. And, there is no doubt about the impact of photography on the entire world. Rewinding time, before selfies were a cultural norm, before geniuses like Cindy Sherman and Andrea Gursky elevated photography to an art form, someone had to invent this piece of technology. So, who invented the camera? And how has it evolved over time into the piece of equipment we now know? Let's take a look at how this revolutionary invention changed how we document life.

The Pinhole Camera and Camera Obscura

Ancestors of the photographic camera, both camera obscura and the pinhole camera date back to the ancient Greeks and Chinese. In fact, Chinese philosopher Mozi, who lived during the Han dynasty (circa 468 - circa 391 BC), was the first person to write down the principles of camera obscura. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle also wrote his musings about the phenomenon in his book Problems, wondering why the sun appears circular even when projected through a rectangular hole.

So, what is camera obscura? This basic principle is a natural optical phenomenon where an image on one side of a wall-or screen-is projected through a hole onto a surface opposite the opening. The resulting projection is upside down. Camera obscura, a term coined in the 16th century, also refers to a box, tent, or room set up for such projections.

The only difference between a camera obscura and a pinhole camera is that a camera obscura uses a lens, while a pinhole camera is a similar device, but with an open hole. This technology picked up steam through the 17th and 18th centuries when artists used these devices to help project drawings they could then trace. The only issue with this system is that clearly, aside from tracing, there was no way to preserve the images.

That's where the next step on the road to the modern photographic camera comes into play.

Johann Zahn, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, and the Invention of the Camera

While early camera obscura devices took up entire rooms, by the 17th-century developments lead to portable devices. Further advancements, like the invention of the magic lantern, further pushed what was possible with projection, but didn't solve the issue of capturing still images.

German author Johann Zahn, an expert on light, wrote extensively about the camera obscura, magic lantern, telescopes, and lenses. In 1685, he proposed a design for the first handheld reflex camera. Ahead of his time, it would take another 150 years before his invention became a reality.
French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is now widely accepted as the creator of photography as we now know it. Using a homemade camera, he produced the first partially successful photograph in 1816 on paper coated with silver chloride. Though this photograph no longer exists, letters from Niépce to his sister give evidence of a successful photograph. The first surviving photograph is also by Niépce and is now in the permanent collection of the University of Texas-Austin. It dates to 1826 or 1827 and is a scene from his window in Burgundy. All this makes Niépce widely accepted as the inventor of the first functional camera.
Using a technique he called heliography, the French inventor was able to produce one-of-a-kind images that could not be replicated. Heliography calls for a glass or metal surface to be coated in Bitumen of Judea. This naturally occurring asphalt would harden in the brightest areas, while the unhardened bitumen would be washed away, leaving behind the photographic imprint. This is still a long way off from photography as we now think of it, but was a revolutionary step towards permanent replicable photographs.

Louis Daguerre and Daguerreotype

In 1829, Niépce joined forces with Louis Daguerre, a French artist and photographer. Together they continued to experiment and refine the process for taking photographs. Several days of exposure were needed to develop Niépce's bitumen-soaked plates. Surely there had to be a better way. After Niécpe's death in 1833, Daguerre continued to hone his process and eventually developed the daguerreotype.

Carrying his name, it would be the most commonly used photographic method for the next twenty years. The process was introduced publicly in 1839 and called for a sheet of silver-plated copper to be polished to a mirror surface. The plate would be treated with iodine vapor to make it light sensitive and after exposure in the camera, would be exposed to mercury vapor and fixed with sodium chloride. Using this method, Daguerre was responsible for taking the first photograph to include human beings.

Daguerre's methodology spread rapidly and by 1840, Alexander Wolcott was issued the first American patent in photography for his daguerreotype camera. Still, the process was expensive, limiting photography to professionals and make a photograph a precious one of a kind keepsake for an elite few.

The Invention of the Photo Negative

To this point, photographs were still one-off items, printed originals that could not be reproduced. This all changed thanks to William Henry Fox Talbot. Scientist and inventor, the Brit developed light-sensitive paper and a process known as calotype, which would lay the foundation of photography up to the digital age.

Around the same time that Daguerre was perfecting his process, Fox Talbot had a different method for quick and accessible photographs. It started with his "salted paper," where he soaked ordinary writing paper in a weak solution of ordinary table salt. Then, by brushing one side with a silver nitrate solution, he effectively produced a light-sensitive paper that could be used for photograms or capturing images from the lens of a camera. Though it still took a few hours of exposure to produce a legible image, the inventor was able to come up with a method to fix the photo print. This was a huge step that hadn't previously been accomplished and allowed copies of the photo to be printed from simply placing new light-sensitive paper against the fixed photograph-or negative.

By late 1840, Fox Talbot revealed his calotype process for developing photographs. With calotype, a latent image could be produced with just a few minutes of exposure if done in bright sunlight. This was a giant leap forward, as calotype also produced a negative that allowed for multiple replicas through contact printing-a true revolution in photography.

George Eastman, Kodak, and Cameras for Consumers

If we want to look at how photographic cameras came into the hands of the public at large, it's impossible not to speak about George Eastman. In 1888, the photographer introduced the first Kodak Black camera, which benefitted from advances in technology. By this time, gelatin plates, which developed quickly, meant that people did not need a tripod for their cameras, and thus the first handheld cameras started being sold.

As opposed to other cameras, Eastman's Kodak was genius in its use of flexible film instead of the glass plates that were the norm. Rid of bulky plates, the Kodak was truly portable. Easy to use, it helped move photography from a strictly a profession to a hobby that amateurs could also enjoy. Kodak Black cameras were sold with the film already inside, and photographers simply mailed the entire camera to the Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York to have their pictures developed and mailed back.

Kodak's beloved Brownie was introduced just two years after the original camera Eastman produced. Now, instead of coming preloaded, the Brownie came with a removable film container. Less expensive than the Kodak Black, coupled with the plus of not having to ship the entire camera to get your photos back, the Brownie caused a sensation and helped popularize amateur photography.

From the mid-19th century onwards, photo technology rapidly developed, as inventors pushed the envelop for how to take still images. From the early-20th century, things reached a peak, with the development of the compact camera through our current digital DSRLs. From glass plates to paper prints to digital imaging, the photo revolution's intention remains the same-to immortalize our world.

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How the Development of the Camera Changed Our World

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Who invented the camera before selfies were a cultural norm? And how has it evolved over time? Let's take a closer look at how this revolutionary invention.

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In 1765 Jospeh Niepce was born.  While attending college Joseph changed his name to Niceophore. He started experimenting with photography in 1816.  He used many different methods until he got it right in 1824. 

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In 1765 Jospeh Niepce was born.  While attending college Joseph changed his name to Niceophore. He started experimenting with photography in 1816.  He used many different methods until he got it right in 1824. 

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Nicéphore Niépce - Heliography - The Inventor of Photography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nicéphore Niépce (born Joseph) was the first to successfully experiment with photography and set foundations for future experimenters and photographers. His photographs needed long time of exposure but could be fixed to last in light without darkening.

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In 1824 Nicephore Niepce was the first person to invent photography which was called heliography. In 1829 Nicephore started working with Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre to continue researching photography. Nicephora died in 1833.