John Ingledew - Photography: Loading

John Ingledew - Photography: Loading

John Ingledew Photography book is an introduction for newcomers who want an insight into photography. It provides historical works which gives exploration and inspirations by creating and manipulating pictures. Ingledew has made me realise that a number of variables contribute to a photograph’s success. “The brilliant thing about photography is that anyone can take pictures and every photographer has the chance to create images in his or her own unique way.” Anyone can take a picture and create something in his/her own way by using their vision through the lens, all through one click of a button. Ingledew highlights that photography is an art form that is significantly personal to either the reader or photographer. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, social status or any other differences, photography can still be formed through a creative mindset. “Photography is a potent and powerful force, able to tell huge stories in single images” When in comes to photography, everybody has an advantage as everybody has the power to practice art through the growth of technology. Cameras can be used to express people’s visions, they are significantly cheaper in this digital age, as well as mobile phones which have 
incorporated digitally advanced cameras built in them. With this digital age, photography has been significantly enhanced.

Photoshop is a clear example of how photography has changed from natural to developed, manipulated photographs. The aim for photographs is to get at "the essence of things. They have the power to evoke, inform and inspire" which is Ingledew’s perspective in photography which has changed my understanding of photography. I believe that photography has a purpose of changing ideologies and perspectives which is shaped into a visionary photograph. I also believe when taking a photograph, the intention should be to make people change their initial thoughts and keep them wondering about whether their theory is right or wrong. Ingledew has made me realise that their is more to photography that changing people's opinions, it is also about inspiring and supporting opinions rather than going against each other. Everyone has a vision that only they can see, which is why we are so unique and creative. Our mindset is built upon influence and change.  

John Ingledew involved historical context about photography to give us a insight into photography: 

How does film-based photography work?

Black and white: Silver is sensitive to sunlight – the more it gets, te blacker it becomes. Black and white photo works by harnessing this reaction. Film and paper are coated with tiny bits of silver; when they are then exposed to light, the silver darkens according to the amount of light that falls on it, the effects being amplified by the use of chemicals.

Colour: Film-based colour photography also make use of silver’s sensitivity to light, but it needs only three basic colours by mixing red, green and blue in order to recreate any particular shade of colour.

How does digital photography work?

It is made up of millions of pixels which form a believable image when our eyes merge them into continuous tones. Each pixel is a solid block of colour and it becomes visible when an image is greatly enlarged. Every single pixel’s individual colour is recorded as a number or digit, which allows to be edited or changed any of the pixels into alter colour, brightness and contrast. 

Difference between the eye and the camera

• Human’s eyes are able to perceive three-dimensional depth (3D), whilst cameras are two-dimensional depth (2D). It only can be seen in 3D in stereoscopic photographs, and it has to be viewed with red and green ‘3D’ glasses.
• Camera offer a vision from zooming near to far, which our eyes cannot.
• The closet distance at which the human eye can focus is about 8 inches or 20cm, but the focus range of a camera lens has no lower limit.
• Our eyes adjust the contrasts of bright light and deep shade. The pupil of our eyes reacts instantly to maintain the level of light falling onto the retina, whereas the photographer must either manually or automatically vary the aperture of the camera to darken or brighten what he/she records.
• Cameras can capture an object by using exposures of fractions of a second or many second, minutes and even hours, whilst our eyes cannot.
• Our eyes only distinguish colour if there is sufficient light, but cameras can retain colour to a greater degree than our eyes in lower-light conditions.

Where has photography come from?

Over 500 years ago, people understood that a small hole in the wall of a darkened room could act like a lens and project image of the scene outside onto the opposite wall. This effect was named ‘camera obscura’, which means dark room and this is how the camera got its name.

The idea of lens came from ‘reading stones’, which is a segment of a glass sphere to magnify letters when placed against books. The earliest illustration of these glasses dates can be traced back to 1350.

The French lithogrpaher and inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce proclaimed he created the first picture copied from nature in one summer’s day in 1826.

Shutters

Photographers recognized the difficulty of capping the lens for short amounts of time and so a ‘shutter’ device would be needed to shut the lens for fractions of a second. In 1872, the first shutters were fitted in front of the lens and a great example of illustrating the impact of shutter is given by Eadweard Muybridge, who took the movement of a horse with shutter speeds of around 1/500 of a second.

(Horse in motion, 1872)

Geroge Eastman

He is an inventor and industrialist who foresaw the commercial possibilities of photography and began manufacturing and marketing his photographic inventions on a massive scale. In 1888, Eastman launched the frist camera to use roll film, he christened his small handheld box camera which is known as the ‘Kodak’ camera. It then became a huge success and it became accessible to tens of millions of people and a new era of picture-taking began. ‘You press the button, we do the rest’