Post #12 - Photography & Printed Media

Last week’s lecture covered a lot of things relevant to my major, Film and Media Arts, so I found it to be really interesting. I have always had a strong interest in photography and digital media, so this lecture was very intriguing for me. 

Starting with the history of painting, we talked about how cavemen would use their hands as stencils to make drawings and keep records on cave walls. Then after writing was invented, monks would copy manuscripts by hand. Reproducing written works by hand was time consuming, so when Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press, everything changed. Coupled with the creation of the railroad, information was now being spread faster and further than ever. As time went on newer and better presses were developed, such as the offset press, then the digital press. 


Printing wasn’t the only form of media that underwent changes though. Photography changed a lot too. Beginning with the first camera type model, we have the camera obscura. Artists used the camera obscura to project images onto a medium so that they could trace/paint it. The projection was only temporary though. That was, until the invention of the Daguerreotype, which would capture images with an exposure time of 15 minutes. The Calotype came after, then the wet plate after that. Collodion, or wet plate photography, changed everything for photographers. As time went on, cameras got better and better, until we got where we are today.


People like Etienne Marey started experimenting with these new technologies in order to study other things. Marey developed a photographic gun in order to capture real-life movement in images. Eadweard Muybridge developed the zoopraxiscope to show images in an almost stop-motion like way. 

This stop-motion idea led the way for Louis Le Prince to invent the first motion pictures. After that, William Dickson invented the kinetograph which allowed for people to watch the motion pictures. People like the Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies are the ones who really helped the idea of cinema take off. 


Seeing the progression of these technologies is a fascinating thing to see. Personally, I think that the contributions people made to film was the most impressive. I like seeing how they got creative with the materials they had, and how they were innovative when it came to overcoming obstacles in filmmaking. 

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