History of the photo printing

It's rather hard to believe but the photography accompany us for almost two hundred years. The very first know photoshoot is called "Point de vue du Gras" ("View from the Window at Le Gras"). It contains, really, a view from the window. The photoshoot was taken in 1826 or 1827 by the French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Just imagine: that happened long before famous Louis Daguerre, an author of daguerreotype process of photography, had started his work. A son of Niepce, who continued his fathers work, became a partner of Daguerre. Surely, "View from the Window at Le Gras" is very far from the modern photo technologies that you can find at photoshoot studio London. Strictly speaking, it was a heliogravure. But the basic principle still remains: to make a picture you need to registrate the optical radiation.



Surely, a problem of photo printing did not exist in XIX century, because an original container of snapshot (in case of the early heliogravures it was the tin alloy plates coated with bitumen) had been a finally container itself. The very first photo printing process had become a calotypy that was invented a bit later, in 1841, by English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot. Typically a calotype used a paper coated with silver nitrate. Later a silver nitrated had been replaced by the next generation of photosensitive substances - a silver chloride. That was a beginning of the photo printing process developing. Meanwhile, a wave of daguerreotype swept the world. In 1839 that technology came to Russia, where the first daguerreotype had become a picture of Saint Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Daguerreotype turned out more profitable by the photosensivity index, but the calotipy was more suitable for the portraits, requiring less than one minute exposure.

Today the best quality of photography is available for everyone. We can make a shot at any place and any time just tapping a few times on our smartphone's screen. Making hundreds and thousands of photos we don't even think of what the great minds and great efforts made it so easy for us.