If you could spend one day in New York City with a famous inventor, who would you like it to be, where would you go, and why?
The decision would be a tough one, as I'd love to meet many inventors and ask them thousands of questions, about their thought processes and how they felt about what they had invented,whether they regretted their creation or if they were proud of it's existence.
I'd love to spend a day with two specific inventors, Louis Daguerre and Joseph Niepce. Together, these two men invented a pinhole camera, (Camera Obscura), which was more convenient to use and made photographic images more durable. Images have always been part of our history; they represent a way of expression, which sometimes can't be expressed with words. Having taken photography classes in high-school, I've come to love photography and can appreciate its many contributions to our society. Photography has totally changed our world, for the better.
Due to advances in photography, people were able to see the devastation of war. Photographers like Mathew Brady brought the war home, they brought death and combat to our doorsteps. I think that when people saw this, something just clicked in their heads, and it stopped being something foreign and strange and became something personal, something serious. It's also served to show us world issues, like world hunger, poverty and disasters. It allows us to see things we might have never seen, it opens the world to us, so that nothing is out of our reach.
Not only am I amazed at the effects photography has had on society, I'm also amazed by the creating process. Niepce started with photo etching and with creativity and skill slowly developed that into the Camera Obscura. From there, he and Daguerre developed the physautotype and began to improve the time constraints and the developing process. After Niepces death, Louis Duguerre invented the Daguerreotype. He invented this by studying the science and mathematics behind image recording.Two years after Niepce's death, Daguerre had an accident that ended up being the solution to making images in less time. Instead of spending eight hours exposing with the camera, a person could spend 20-30 minutes exposing the photographic paper. He also modified the process and developed a way to fix the image, so that it would not disappear.
I'd go somewhere that was gritty and had used and unique objects, to see how Daguerre and Niepce would photograph these things with the modern camera. Perhaps to an antique store or aged and old fashioned home. Every artist has a different point of view, but because Daguerre and Niepce are from the 1800's, the way they see the world is probably very different from my own view of it. With any luck we'd spend the day learning about each others techniques and thought processes. Daguerre and Niepce would teach me how exactly they went about creating their cameras. We'd develop our photographs and compare and contrast them. That way we could see our interpretations or notion of every odd end we photographed. In the end I would hope to have gained a new perspective on how I see the world and incorporate that into my photography and into my life.
The decision would be a tough one, as I'd love to meet many inventors and ask them thousands of questions, about their thought processes and how they felt about what they had invented,whether they regretted their creation or if they were proud of it's existence.
I'd love to spend a day with two specific inventors, Louis Daguerre and Joseph Niepce. Together, these two men invented a pinhole camera, (Camera Obscura), which was more convenient to use and made photographic images more durable. Images have always been part of our history; they represent a way of expression, which sometimes can't be expressed with words. Having taken photography classes in high-school, I've come to love photography and can appreciate its many contributions to our society. Photography has totally changed our world, for the better.
Due to advances in photography, people were able to see the devastation of war. Photographers like Mathew Brady brought the war home, they brought death and combat to our doorsteps. I think that when people saw this, something just clicked in their heads, and it stopped being something foreign and strange and became something personal, something serious. It's also served to show us world issues, like world hunger, poverty and disasters. It allows us to see things we might have never seen, it opens the world to us, so that nothing is out of our reach.
Not only am I amazed at the effects photography has had on society, I'm also amazed by the creating process. Niepce started with photo etching and with creativity and skill slowly developed that into the Camera Obscura. From there, he and Daguerre developed the physautotype and began to improve the time constraints and the developing process. After Niepces death, Louis Duguerre invented the Daguerreotype. He invented this by studying the science and mathematics behind image recording.Two years after Niepce's death, Daguerre had an accident that ended up being the solution to making images in less time. Instead of spending eight hours exposing with the camera, a person could spend 20-30 minutes exposing the photographic paper. He also modified the process and developed a way to fix the image, so that it would not disappear.
I'd go somewhere that was gritty and had used and unique objects, to see how Daguerre and Niepce would photograph these things with the modern camera. Perhaps to an antique store or aged and old fashioned home. Every artist has a different point of view, but because Daguerre and Niepce are from the 1800's, the way they see the world is probably very different from my own view of it. With any luck we'd spend the day learning about each others techniques and thought processes. Daguerre and Niepce would teach me how exactly they went about creating their cameras. We'd develop our photographs and compare and contrast them. That way we could see our interpretations or notion of every odd end we photographed. In the end I would hope to have gained a new perspective on how I see the world and incorporate that into my photography and into my life.