HANDBOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY 



CHAPTER I 



OUTLINE OF PHOTOGRAPHY 



By Keith Henney and Beverly Dudley 



Present Status of Photography. — The fact that vision is the sense upon which we 

 depend most in arriving at our ideas and conclusions of the exterior world is probably 

 the reason why visual representations have always been so important in conveying 

 intelligence between people. Crude drawings and sketches, for the purpose of impart- 

 ing ideas, certainly antedate the written word and probably also the more refined 

 elaborations of the spoken word, and they still find application. Orthographic 

 projections, isometric perspective drawings, and symbolic or graphical representations, 

 usually technical in character, are later developments of the first crude factual type 

 of drawings. A totally different type of intelligence conveyance, in which aesthetics 

 and the appreciation of the beautiful play a dominant part, has been developed in the 

 various methods of painting, drawing, and the graphic arts. All these powerful 

 methods of conveying intelligence — be it factual data or a desire to point out the 

 beautiful in nature — depend for their success upon the interpretation of results 

 through our visual sense. All of them make use of light as the common factor. 



With the introduction of practical photographic processes beginning about 1837, a 

 new, accurate, and relatively rapid means of portraying visual sensations became 

 possible. At first these photographic processes were slow, cumbersome, and were 

 infrequently employed, at least judged by present standards. But the results that 

 could be obtained in the hands of skilled workers were quite remarkable. With the 

 introduction of dry plates and roll film in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 

 considerable impetus was given to photography. It became possible to use photo- 

 graphs to replace hand drawings for purposes of illustration in reading matter. Pic- 

 tures could be made, relatively quickly, of many things for which a graphical record 

 was desired. A new field of artistry became possible, although even now there are 

 some who refuse to admit the artistic possibilities of photographic methods. The 

 introduction of the film rather than the glass plate as a base for the photographic 

 emulsion made possible the motion pictures and aided the adoption of photograph}^ as 

 a hobby by a vast army of amateur photographers. 



More recently, the introduction of high-speed film materials having good color 

 sensitivity throughout most, if not all, of the visible spectrum and the wide acceptance 

 of high precision cameras of miniature size produced a public "picture consciousness" 

 which has been considerably strengthened in the last decade. This has resulted in, 

 or perhaps it would be more precise to say that this has been associated with, con- 

 siderable improvements in the graphic arts. Magazines, books, and newspapers are 

 better illustrated than ever before, and there are more illustrations used in them. 

 ■Since about 1935 or 1936 a number of publications have appeared which have been 

 almost completely devoted to the pictorial representation of current events. Indeed 



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