10 Photography Firsts
Okay, this was pretty cool so I'm just gonna go right ahead and steal it (with accreditation of course). Ranging from the world's oldest surviving photograph to the first photo from space, they're a nice collection (if you swing that way, that is): 1838 — The World’s First Photograph of a Person Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of another person in 1838. The photograph, called Boulevard du Temple, shows a busy street that appears to be largely abandoned (the exposure was 10 minutes long and consequently the traffic is not visible) with the exception of a man in the bottom left corner. 1858–World’s First Photomontage In 1858, Henry Peach Robinson [wiki] made the world’s first photomontage by combining multiple negatives to form a single image. Robinson’s first and most famous composite photo, called “Fading Away”, was a composition of five negatives. It depicted a girl dying of consumption (or tuberculosis), and quite controversial as some objected to the morbid subject of the photo. 1861 — The World’s First Color Photograph James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist, took the first color photograph in 1861. The photographic plates used in the process are now located in a house where Maxwell was born (which has since then been converted into a museum) at 14 India Street, Edinburgh. 1875 — The First Self-Portrait Photograph Celebrated American photographer Mathew B. Brady was one of the first people to ever take a self-portrait photograph (shown below). Self-portrait paintings, of course, have existed for hundreds of years. 1946 — The World’s First Photo from Space Not long after the end of the Second World War, on October 24, 1946, a 35-millimeter motion picture camera riding on a V-2 missile captured the first photographs from space at an altitude of 65 miles from Earth. 1856 — The World’s First Underwater Photograph William Thompson took the first underwater photographs using a camera mounted on a pole, which he accessed from above the water. The pictures were of seaweed and of obviously poor quality. The exposure time was approximately 10 minutes and, as expected, the camera flooded but the photograph was salvaged. Note: Original image unavailable 1903 — The World’s First Aerial Photograph As you can see, the first aerial photographers weren’t human at all — they were birds! In 1903, Julius Neubronner combined a camera with a timer and attached it to a pigeon’s neck to take aerial photographs. The trick was noted by the German army and consequently used for wartime reconnaissance. 1923 — The World’s First Underwater Color Photograph The first underwater color photograph (a photo of a hogfish) was taken in the Gulf of Mexico by Dr. William Longley Charles Martin in 1926. 1972 — The World’s First Photograph to Show a Fully Lit Earth The first photo to show a fully lit Earth is better known as The Blue Marble and was taken December 7, 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17. Because the sun was behind the Earth at the time the photograph was taken, the Earth appears to be fully lit.
1826: The World's Oldest Surviving Photograph
Joseph Niepce, a French inventor and pioneer in photography, is generally credited with having taken the first photograph (requiring an eight-hour exposure time). Niepce’s photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras, in recent years has been on display at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. (source)
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