Digital Photography History

Digital Photography has been the bridge between the nineteenth and twenty-first century. From his first steps back in 1839, photography has served as a living document for the history of mankind.

His documentary has been located in the center of visual communication, finding the land of germination, mainly in advertising, art and journalism. Today, after half a century of television, radio, Internet and new digital technologies have expanded the most of the experimentation and creative power.


Back in 1839 Joseph Nicephore Niepce succeeded, after an eight-hour exposure, capturing the first image that has recorded the history of digital photography. Thus was born the picture, the wonderful invention that combined two phenomena: the camera obscura, which would capture the reflection of the image, and the various physical and chemical experiments to fix the image.

The first images were the frames: silhouettes of leaves and insects, printed on a sheet of leather and fastened with phosphorus and silver salts. Then came the daguerreotype, a camera similar to the famous Polaroid, which greatly shortened the exposure time, but gave us a snapshot, in positive and that needed exposure for another copy.

The image in negative-positive system (as we knew it until the arrival of digital cameras) should his invention, William Henry Fox Talbot, who also in the year 1839, published what could be considered as the first publication devoted exclusively to photography : Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, a collection of photographic positive, using paper negatives.

What today is known as flash was a process that began with fine powders of magnesium, which when detonated with the spray, produced an effect of artificial light. Finally, in 1930 came the flash lamp.
In less than two years (1935-1936), appearing on the market and Agfacolor Kodachrome, which were achieved with transparencies or color slides. In the '40s perfected the daguerreotype and have the Polaroid Land.

And the 60's where all the advances are perfected: color, speed, lower prices of zinc, cadmium sulfide and titanium oxide with the use of film Itek RS.

Since those early years to today's reality, photography has appeared in countless areas, growing in the collective imagination and sociological reflection of our thinkers, the idea of society in the image.

The documentary nature of photography, that is, its ability to capture on film some important facts of reality, has become an indispensable tool for science, art, advertising and journalism.

In each field, and according to the look of each of the makers of history, photography has acted as the disseminator of certain ideologies and a significant agent firsthand.

Science has served to medical school (remember the X-ray, MRI, stethoscopic operations), studies of biology (nature photography, scuba diving), cartography, geology, exploration, military, archeology and forensic science (the popular black light) to name a few.

Photography has extended the human eye bringing it to the ranges of the infrared or ultraviolet, previously unsuspected. It also expanded the field of imagination to enable the development of film and photographic art.

Who has ever seen, with the fascination of those who look for the first time, those films of Charles Chaplin or rayograms of Man Ray?

In the realm of ideas, ie, advertising, design and journalism, has been the site par excellence, since during the second portion of the twentieth century is that we have your full swing.

First come to complement the print communication, putting in images what the text can not express. So we in the journalism ranks one of the most coveted: the photographer and / or war correspondent, this epic hero, that camera in hand, to capture the collective memory of the horrors of history.

So will names like Robert Capa, who immortalized the image of the Normandy landings in World War II, or a thousand photographers who form the staff of National Geographic, or Sebastian Salgado's lens, the portrait of American poverty.

So too will emerge the major news agencies and the development will or photojournalism photojournalism: it is the reality of journalistic practice that attempts by one or more photos to account for reality. Among the agencies and newspapers that they deserve a prominent place for their use of photography, to my taste are: El Pais, El Mundo and Photography has been and is a document of reality in constant motion. A reality that seeks its attention span of the viewer. Certain times higher quality than others, but always forward in the meaning of our world.


If before we talk of childhood and adolescence of photography, and after almost two centuries of existence, we have reached a remarkable maturity from the hand of internet and new technologies.

In the ancient analog film cameras (delusions of some inveterate collectors) have jumped on the digital image and spread globally in the network. Now the standards of quality and clarity are measured in megapixels and the reach of any magic is the Adobe Photoshop.

The big news agencies are raking in reading and visiting the "Picture of the day." Has also been opened and put into discussion the documentary nature of photography through the manipulation that allow the different image processing software.