Question 1
Pick three events in the timeline from this week’s lesson History of Photography: An Introduction, and write a paragraph explaining the event in more detail.
Tintypes
A tintype is a positive photograph that is taken on a thin plate made of tin. Tintypes are commonly referred to as a ferrotype and are made by layering a sheet of metal with a dark lacquer and then applying a collodion-nitrocellulose solution right before exposure.
There is still a type of photography that some like to perform til this day.
A family at the seaside, c. 1880, Science Museum Group collection
Color photographs
Before the technical innovations of the years 1935 to 1942, the only way to create a subtractive full-color print or transparency was by means of one of several labor-intensive and time-consuming procedures. Most commonly, three pigment images were first created separately by the so-called carbon process and then carefully combined in register. Sometimes, related processes were used to make three gelatin matrices which were dyed and assembled or used to transfer the three dye images into a single layer of gelatin coated on a final support. Chemical toning could be used to convert three black-and-white silver images into cyan, magenta and yellow images which were then assembled. In a few processes, the three images were created one on top of another by repeated coating or re-sensitizing, negative registration, exposure and development operations. A number of variations were devised and marketed during the first half of the 20th century, some of them short-lived, others, such as the Trichrome Carbro process, enduring for several decades. Because some of these processes allow very stable and light-fast coloring matter to be used, yielding images which can remain virtually unchanged for centuries, they are still not quite completely extinct.
Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California.
Flexible roll film
Rollfilm or roll film is any type of spool-wound photographic film protected from white light exposure by a paper backing, as opposed to film which is protected from exposure and wound forward in a cartridge. The term originated in contrast to sheet film. Confusingly, roll film was originally often referred to as “cartridge” film because of its resemblance to a shotgun cartridge.
The opaque backing paper allows roll film to be loaded in daylight. It is typically printed with frame number markings which can be viewed through a small red window at the rear of the camera. A spool of roll film is usually loaded on one side of the camera and pulled across to an identical take up spool on the other side of the shutter as exposures are made. When the roll is fully exposed, the take up spool is removed for processing and the empty spool on which the film was originally wound is moved to the other side, becoming the take up spool for the next roll of film.
Question 2
Write a short think piece about a photograph from the 19th century.
I chose an image from 1869 taken in a village near Yokohama, Japan. The photograph was taken by Willhelm Burger and is called The Village. He travelled to the far east to develop commercial relations there.
From the photo compared to other photos at the time it sure looks like Willhelm had a good grasp on the technology in these cameras, it is a very steady and clear photo.
The subjects of the photo seems natural and not really like they are posing but just Willhelm taking a calm natural photo of the village he was visiting.
Even though the photo was taken in the 1869 the quality and doesn’t hold back the beauty of the shot. it has a good clear visualisation of the village and a beautiful backdrop. And the angle of this photo was pretty much perfect in my opinion, showing of the near and wide locations in the village.
I love Japanese culture both old and new, and these kind of photographs are really interessting to me because it give the viewer a real look into the natural state of the time it was taken. This particular photo looks to me almost like a classic japanese painting, specially in the mountains.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
https://allthatsinteresting.com/women-ww2
https://steemit.com/history/@cottonlazarus/wilhelm-burger-village-japan-1869
Kenneth. Tragethon 