Photography the art and technique of obtaining lasting images

Photography (photo- and -graphy) is the art and technique of obtaining durable images due to the action of light. It is the process of projecting images, capturing them and capturing them, either by fixing them on a sensitive medium to light or by conversion into electronic signals. Based on the principle of the camera obscura, an image captured by a small hole is projected onto a surface, in such a way that the size of the image is reduced. To capture and save this image, cameras use sensitive film for chemical photography, while in digital photography CCD, CMOS, etc. sensors are used; which then record the images in digital memories. The term photography serves to name both the whole process of obtaining these images and its result: the images obtained or "photographs".

Etymology

The term "photography" comes from the Greek φῶς phōs (root φωτ- phōt, 'light'), and γράφω grapho (root γράφ- graf, 'to scratch, draw, write') which, together, means 'to write/engrave with the light'.

Several people may have coined the same new term from these roots independently. Hercules Florence, a French painter and inventor who lived in Campinas, Brazil, used the French form of the word, photography, in private notes that a Brazilian historian believes were written in 1834. This claim is widely reported, but not yet confirmed. recognized to a large extent internationally. The first use of the word by the French-Brazilian inventor became widely known after Boris Kossoy's research in 1980.

The German newspaper Vossische Zeitung of February 25, 1839 contained an article entitled Photographie, which examined various priority claims, notably that of Henry Fox Talbot, in relation to Daguerre's invention claim. The article is the first known appearance of the word in the public press. It was signed "J.M.", believed to be the Berlin astronomer Johann von Maedler. The astronomer John Herschel is also credited with coining the word, independently of Talbot, in 1839. However, Joan Fontcuberta in her book The Kiss of Judas (1997), has shown that Henry Fox Talbot did not know enough Greek to be able to understand that photography means rather "apparent writing" and that it does not really mean writing with light, but "writing of appearances".

The inventors Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Henry Fox Talbot, and Louis Daguerre do not appear to have known or used the word "photography," instead referring to their procedures as "blueprints" (Niépce), "calotype" (Talbot), and "daguerreotype" ( Daguerre)