Capture the Memories: The role of portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today

I would say that the main differences between portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today is the style and the idea of when photography was invented. Back then in the good old days, masters have a limited view of the new concept of photography, many may not accept this new invention as art because it was something new to them. The originality of a particular idea is the main focus today compared to decades ago where only paintings were called "art". However, there are still many artists/photographers today trying to get their view out to the world to let everyone see the beauty in a object - that is the similarity that will never change through time. Janurary 7th, 1839 was the day photography was created by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. Without this creation for visual presentations we would not have developed the photos that we have today.

Photographers back then would probably call themselves as masters because they had spent most of their lives learning how to be a professional in this industry. The time that photographers had spent in trhe 18th - 19th century in photography is very serious to them. Comparing this to now, everyone can call themselves as photographers, because as long as you have a camera you can take pictures anywhere and whatever you want. Even if one has not practiced the studies on photography they can still pick up a camera and take marvelous pictures if it is to their interests. There are no boundaries today of photography, you can basically take pictures of any object you like. For example: for myself I love to take pictures of objects, I normally do not like to have people in it. At times when I go on trips, even if it is road trip I can take pictures of the surroundings while I am in the car - whether they are trees or buildings or even road signs. Back then you would mainly just focus on portraits or landscapes.

The impact of technology was huge on photos we see in the past and today. In the past, many masters would spent hours in the dark room getting their prints the way they want and to what seems to them the perfect taste and style of the portrait. It was a very time-consuming work of art, now a days it is a lot easier than the old days, with the technology of DSLRs and digital cameras we do not need to go to the dark room to print out the pictures that we took anymore and to edit them. The precious time that photographers in the past took in their dark rooms were to create master pieces using many difficult skills to create the perfect photo, and also using all types of chemicals - (in a way they can also a chemist). "From the mid-1820s Daguerre had searched for a way to make pictures using light and chemistry". Although Daguerre has made the turn of the century on photos, now with our technology we can do anything in a split second on pictures we took on the computer. With all the programs that had been created by intelligent programmers like photoshop or softwares on Apple - these help us make our lives a lot easier to edit our photos, whether it is to crop or add effects. Not only do we have programs created to edit pictures, let's talk about cameras just by itself. The digital cameras that we have now is not just like the ones that Daguerre use to have where it is only a wood box with lens at the end. The digital cameras now provide many features - many including face detection, the contrasts, effects that you would like to add on - for example the negative-positive effect (where later on will be explained). Doesn't this kind of technology make our whole lives better and more efficient? However, some photographers like the originality of creating the perfect photo in the dark room.

Remember where I had an example above about the negative=positive effect? This is an example of how it looks when it was back in the good old days. William Henry Fox Talbot's calotype process was the first negative-positive photographic process created in the 1841s. " A sheet of good quality paper was first treated with light-sensitive silber compounds before exposure in the camera. The 'latent' image thus produced was then developed in gallo-nitrate of silver and fixed" (Waxed calotype negative).