World Photo Day

 

August 19th is World Photo Day!  How awesome that there is a day dedicated to  the celebration of Photography!  The date commemorates the purchase of the daguerreotype process patent by the French Government in 1839. Frenchman Louis Daguerre, was the inventor of the process that bears his name, a way to etch highly detailed images onto silver plates using light-sensitive chemicals.  With the backing of the French Government (who awarded him a pension for life) the daguerreotype process became freely available to the public and soon exploded in popularity.  But it was a competing process, the calotype, invented around the same time by English gentleman scientist, William Henry Fox-Talbot that was the foundation of modern photography, allowing for a negative that could print multiple paper copies of the same picture. Fox-Talbot perfected and patented his process in 1841 and charged a license fee for it's use.  That is why the freely-available Daguerreotype was initially much more popular.

Where would we be as photographers today if not for the inventors and pioneers of the Victorian age?  We can't even imagine the excitement those early images caused.  Those early practitioners were members of the leisure class because it required time and money but it spread fast. In 1863, just 24 years after the invention of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron, another of my photographic heroes, was given a camera for Christmas. She took up photography at the age of 48 and invented portrait photography!

So how should we celebrate World Photo day? The most obvious way is to take photos but maybe it's more than that. We need to take care of our photos and the history that they record. Don't leave those boxes of family photos in the damp basement to deteriorate. Sort through them and digitize the most precious ones so that they will last, and make sure your family knows the stories they can tell. When my daughter hit a milestone birthday, I made her a book telling her life in pictures up to that point. It was a blast going through all the prints and choosing which to scan for the book, although I kept getting sidetracked by all the memories.  In celebration of World Photo Day, get out your books and albums and look at those photos again!

In 2014 I had the chance to visit Lacock Abbey, the home of William Henry Fox-Talbot. It is a beautiful place, with significance both to students of photography and fans of the Harry Potter movies!  As well as seeing the actual window that featured in a very early Fox-Talbot calotype, I got to see the cloisters where Harry and his fellow students walked and the room where Professor Snape taught his potions class!  Isn't it appropriate that a place that is linked to the magical dawn of photography should also be linked to modern movie magic?

If you have boxes and boxes of photos to digitize, check out the new digitization boxes from Forever. An easy process just got simpler!  FOREVER DIGITIZATION  Get in touch if you want to know more!