One hundred and eighty years ago, in the summer of 1826, in the French country side, Joseph Nicephore Niepce set up a camera obscura in the window of his country house. He removed the cap from it's pinhole, and exposed a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea for at least eight hours. He removed the plate and washed it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, dissolving areas of the plate not hardened by the sunlight. He had created the first permanent permanent photograph from nature.
Today, using cameras ranging from cardboard kits and Holga mods, to handmade wooden collector's items with finely-machined brass parts,photographers continue to explore the unique quality of images captured by exposing film to extended periods of light passing through a tiny (.02 inches or smaller) pinhole. Images express unexpected, dream-like qualities of time, perspective, depth-of-field, and composition.
Learn more: The First Photograph | Wikipedia | Exposure Guide | Zero Image | Photo.net
