WEBVTT - Photo Editing and Manipulation, Part One 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:14.520 Technology with tex Stuff from Hooks dot Com. Say there 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.319 and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and with 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:22.080 me today is a very special guest, our own photographical 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.959 expert here at hell Stuff, where it's Dylan. Welcome to 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.240 the show. Thanks thanks for having me. Yeah, Dylan and 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:33.000 I have had some really cool discussions about the technology 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.600 of photography and some different ideas around it, and Dylan 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:40.600 has generously offered up some of his precious time to 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.159 jump into the studio to talk about photo manipulation and 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:46.760 photo editing. So this is going to be a two 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.760 part podcast. We know that starting off, we're gonna concentrate 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:54.200 on sort of the pre digital era for this first episode, 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:56.640 and then our next one will be kind of the 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:02.040 various techniques and motivations behind photo manipulation and the post 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:07.160 digital era where we're no longer talking necessarily about physical 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.399 media but lots of zeros and ones instead. But the 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.000 the interesting thing to me is that photo manipulation has 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:21.120 been around almost as long as photography has, and in 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.840 large part because of the limitations of photography, especially the 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:29.360 early days, it was kind of seen early on as okay, 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.160 well we have the foundation down now, how do we 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:34.679 make up for all the things that we can't do 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.039 at least yet. You know, you don't know in their 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.080 mind if they knew that was going to be a 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:43.600 possibility in the future, but um, it kind of gave 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:48.760 them the ability to add to a photo what cameras 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.600 were not able to do at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:57.040 those early cameras were incredibly limited. And uh, you know 0:01:57.520 --> 0:01:59.760 it helps if we take kind of a step back 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:01.840 and look at a little bit of history. And by 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:03.800 a little bit of history, I mean I've created a 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:08.320 timeline to kind of walk us through the early development 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.359 no pun intended. Okay, no, that was definitely a pun 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.720 intended of photography. So before we get to any photography 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.200 at all, before we get to the point where we're 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:22.600 recording light onto some medium, we can talk a little 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.320 bit about the camera obscura, which was not necessarily about 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:30.880 recording recording images, but more about projecting them. Yes, and 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.119 this is ancient technology. I mean, when you think about it, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.520 the basic technology was a dark chamber or room through 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.919 which you have a hole in one wall and then 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:45.040 you can project across the on the opposite wall. Yeah, 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.000 and uh, what you saw on the opposite wall would 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:53.640 be correct in perspective, but it would be eight degrees 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:56.680 rotating a hundred degrees. It would be upside down. Yeah, 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.040 so I I have often seen this used as a 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.760 way for artists who wanted to do a big wall mural. 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.200 For example, they would have an image on one side, 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:09.639 so it would be projected large on the opposite where 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.560 they could actually trace things out, although not all artists 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:16.080 were very capable of doing this, and it wouldn't be 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.200 until the Renaissance. Like even though the technology itself was 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.200 thousands of years old in the sense that the ancient 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.840 Chinese and Greeks were using the sort of yeah, it 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:28.919 really does. It's always like it's always like, well you 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:30.480 have you gotta look to the Middle East and you 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:32.840 gotta look to China for some of these amazing developments 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.240 that took a long time to make their way to 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.160 the Western world. But in the Renaissance, there was an 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.120 Italian writer named Gia Batista de la Porta who was 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:47.040 really the first to use a lens arrangement in camera scares. 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:49.920 It was more than just the simple hole or a mirror. 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.680 It was a lens. And uh, that's where we started 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:58.560 really calling it camera obscura. And then you move ahead 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:04.040 about a hundred years to and that's when a gentleman 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.440 by the name of Johann Heinrich Schulz uh noticed something 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.600 really odd. In fact, it was something that other people 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.240 had noticed, but he was the one who actually put 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.839 two and two together. We're talking silver salts here. Now, 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:23.840 silver salts, when exposed to light, uh get darker. And 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.880 this is a major part of early photography. But for 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.920 a long time people thought that it was heat that 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:36.000 made the salts turn dark. Now, what Schultz did was 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.279 he had an experiment where he he had essentially a 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.359 surface covered in silver salts, and he put a covering 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:46.440 over it so that he could spell out a word 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:48.920 in the silver salt, and then exposed that to light 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.800 and it made those salts turn dark. So he actually 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:56.479 could spell out words using light this way, but he 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.240 didn't have any way of preserving it. There's no way 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:01.920 for him to keep this so that it would permanently 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:03.960 have this word. In fact, as soon as you remove 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.799 the covering and the rest of the salts are exposed 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.400 to light, everything turns dark. So it's like you have 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.000 a temporary image. It's kind of like the snapchat of 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:19.720 its day. Yeah, that a very very kind of simple 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:21.960 snapchat where someone would have to be in there with 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.839 you and be like, all right, you're gonna have to 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:26.880 look at this right now, because as soon as I 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.480 turn on the light, this sucker, it's it's it's time 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:35.320 will be very limited a latent image. Um yeah, in 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.479 a way that like if you see something very bright 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.080 and you close your eyes right there, it is first second. Yeah, 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.720 So it wouldn't be until the eighteen twenties. That's when 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.200 a fellow by the name of Anissa four neepsie, thank 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.000 you for pronouncing that. That's a guess my French jump. 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:57.320 Papa francis bien mais, So I am not very good 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.560 with the French pronunciation. I haven't had a French since 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.800 high school, so I apologize for butchering the name. But 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.760 he developed a technique to use light in order to 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.800 make copies of engravings. And what he would do is 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:12.760 he would take it engraving and cover it an oil, 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.560 and then he would put the engraving on a plate 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.760 that was coated with a combination of lavender oil and 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:23.080 vitamin of Judea, which is a light sensitive material. And 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:26.680 uh yeah, and he had the first successful image in 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:31.000 eighteen sixteen. Yeah, amazing, right, Like he was able to 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.560 use this and he called the process heliography, meaning from 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.480 the sun to right, So it was close to photography, 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.760 but he was calling it heliography. By eighteen twenty six, 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:43.760 he was using that process on lots of stuff like 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.680 lithographic stone, on glass, on zinc, and on pewter plates. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.000 And in eighteen six he used a camera obscura and 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.880 pewter plate to produce a photograph from nature. It was 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.240 an image of the courtyard of his estate. It was 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.400 taken from an upstairs balcony and over the course of 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:03.880 eight hours. Yes, it took a number of hours. Yeah. 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:06.880 That was the real issue where with these early approaches 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.000 is that they had not perfected the chemistry necessary to 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:15.160 have this reaction of light that would affect chemicals in 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.440 such a way as to preserve an image. What's really 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.000 funny is that the lens technology was much farther ahead 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.000 from the start than the chemistry, and a lot of 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:30.680 early photography was really only limited by the chemicals involved. Yeah, 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.160 so you would end up having these super long exposure 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:35.440 times in the In some cases it meant that the 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:41.360 the image you produced is otherworldly because in the case 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.440 of this one with a courtyard, the lights coming from 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.640 the sun and it's over the course of eight hours, 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:48.880 which reads, the sun starts in the east and ends 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.600 in the west. So in the finished image you have 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.840 light from the sun shining from both directions. It's as 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:57.960 if you know, obviously we don't live in a world 0:07:58.000 --> 0:07:59.800 where you can really do that in a in an 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.360 in stint, you would have to have this long exposure 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.520 time in order to achieve that so kind of a 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:10.400 special effect just by the very limitation of the media itself. Yeah, 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.560 the exposure time is early on would would make things, 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.120 like you said, look very otherworldly. And it was just 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.640 because it was out of necessity, that's what they had. Yeah, Yeah, 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.320 they didn't have any option really, Like it wasn't like 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:24.840 it had nothing to do with shutter speed or any 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.200 of the other stuff we talked about with cameras. It 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.440 had specifically to do with the limitation of the materials, 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:34.960 the chemicals they were using. By eighteen thirty three, that's 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:39.520 when we first start seeing the term photograph being used. Uh. 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.280 And in fact, it was apparently coined by a fellow 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:48.400 named Hercules Florence or Hercule floren if you want to 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.120 be fancy. Uh. He coined the term, using it to 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:54.560 describe a process in which he used paper with silver 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:58.920 salts to produce prints of drawings. However, his work actually 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.760 largely took place in Brazil, and because Brazil was so 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.600 far removed from all the other areas that we're looking into, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:11.560 this mostly in Europe, his work remained largely unknown until 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.000 the nineteen seventies. And I would like to notice is 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.800 really interesting work. It's something to look into. He had 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:23.240 some nice photographs, yeah. Yeah. And and our next fellow 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.960 who made a big impression on photography is one that 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.520 probably most people have heard, at least heard the technology 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:36.199 named after him. That would be uh, Louis jacquesmand the 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:42.280 Gare type. Yeah. So he used the camera obscura in 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.040 a plate of iodized silver, which would allow him to 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.360 create a latent image of a scene. That's what Dylan 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.800 was talking about just a minute ago. And he found 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.760 that if you expose that plate to mercury vapor, the 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.160 exposed parts of the image, the ones that had been 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:01.240 exposed to light, would become visible, so it would develop. 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.800 This is where we start talking about developing photographs, and 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.320 that approach reduced the exposure times needed eventually from eight 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.839 hours down to around half an hour ish um using 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:15.160 this particular approach, But there was a drawback. If the 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.959 developed picture was exposed to light, like after you've taken it, 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:22.120 then the unexposed areas of silver would continue to darken 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.240 and eventually the image would become impossible to see. So 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.000 you'd have an image for a while. But again, imagine 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:30.880 that you have a photograph in your hand and you 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.120 take it out anywhere where there's light, and it would 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.360 just gradually become a dark picture, like there will be 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.080 no no, no way of distinguishing what was there before. Yeah, 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.400 like like it before you expose film and a film 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:46.280 camera if anyone's ever done that, you have to go 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.040 into a pitch black room to do so because once 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:53.200 you open the back of the light tight camera, when 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.000 if you have that film exposed to the you know, 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.559 to light, it's it's just gonna go completely dark. You're 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.400 not going to be able to take any photographs with 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:03.920 that role of film right now, Dylan, have you ever 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.200 worked in the dark room? I have, yes, So what 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.680 is what is it like when you are doing something 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.520 like that, like you know the the we've seen movies 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.079 with the process where you've got the people with like 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.960 the three or four different little basins filled with fluid 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.120 and there's never any explanation of what was actually happening. 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.559 It is. It's an updated version of something like the 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.920 gear was doing. The chemicals are a lot less dangerous 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.640 using mercury. You're a lot less likely to go crazy 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.880 or catch on fire. Yes, yes, but it's a it's 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.000 a process, but it's something that I think if you're 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:45.520 interested in photography you should you should try the development process, 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:51.200 um because from going into the closet to load your film, 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.480 figuring out how to open something and put it in 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.760 the back of the camera in Pitch Black, is is 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.440 a lot of it's frustrating, but it's a lot of fun. 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.520 And then you you know, even to the I don't 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.199 want to get too ahead of us, but the photo 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.560 the process of taking a photographs a lot different because 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.000 you realize you have like twelve to thirties six shots 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.000 and so it's it's not like on your phone or 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.280 on your digital camera, which is which is great freedom. 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.120 But you think I paid I paid money for this 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:27.280 film and it makes you much more selective and careful, 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.600 and and only that, but I mean even that is 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.520 a huge step from what we're talking about here, where 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:38.720 taking a single image required so much effort just the 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.200 not just the taking it, but the developing of that 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.440 single image took so much effort that obviously the composition 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:47.520 of your shot was really important. And if you messed 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:51.000 that up, you're talking about a day's work. In some cases, 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.200 that's a lot of for one image. It's it's easy 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:56.640 for us to forget that in the realm of selfies 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:01.600 that we have today. Yeah, so I'll definitely be relying 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.160 upon you heavily when we start talking about manipulation in 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.040 this world. But to get back to the history, just 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.880 a couple more points I want to make. Uh, So 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.120 we've got to get who starts solving the problem of 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.240 this image immediately disappearing if you were to expose it 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:22.520 to light by using ordinary table salt. Actually, yeah, he 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:24.640 put it in a water solution. You got your sodium 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:28.199 chloride solution. He would use that to dissolve the unexposed 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.640 silver iodide that was left on the paper, So that 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.720 way the exposed stuff had already been exposed it's fine. 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.640 You dissolve everything else, so now that stuff can't end 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.040 up going dark, and you're left with your image and 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.880 you could fix it permanently because light can no longer 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.880 ruin them. And uh, Eventually the gere would find a 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.400 way of producing photographs on silvered copper plate, which was 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:57.479 kind of his his medium of choice from that point forward. Meanwhile, 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.800 there was another fellow, William Henry Fox Talbot, who was 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.720 working on a different approach to create photographic images of 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.120 scientific observations. The reason all right, he was a scientist, 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.920 not he wasn't necessarily interested in photography. Originally he was 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.960 interested in science. But he had a problem. He couldn't 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:21.240 draw at all. He had like he would try all 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:23.480 these sort of things that he would just trace using 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:27.040 a camera obscura didn't matter. He found himself incapable of 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:32.400 doing that. I find myself sympathizing heavily with him. I 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:35.520 have a distinct lack of artistic ability when it comes 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:37.960 to that. So he wanted to find a way to 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:43.120 preserve scientific observations exactly as they were and record them 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.920 in a way that would not require him to draw 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.280 in any way, shape or fashion. So he started to 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.920 look into a way to create photographic prints on paper, 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.680 not using plates like the gear was using. So he 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.440 used paper soaked in solutions of sodium chlor ride and 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:04.960 silver nitrate in order to produce silver chloride infused paper. 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:07.400 And if he exposed that paper to light, it would 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:09.400 cause the exposed parts to become dark, and that would 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.720 create a negative image. If he took another sheet of 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.960 this and put it against the one that had been 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.280 exposed and then exposed that to light, that would create 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.760 a positive image on the second sheet. And for the 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.600 first time, you could get hypothetically more than one print 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.000 from a picture. Yes, you were not limited to whatever 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.480 the original plate was. Now you could produce multiple prints, 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:38.160 assuming that everything stayed intact through this process, which was painstaking. 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.200 It was still not easy to do um and in fact, 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:45.200 there were times where it took some experimentation with this 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.200 approach to get it to work just right, because often 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:52.320 they were having quality issues with transferring the image from 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.720 the negative to the the secondary sheet. And it wasn't 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.440 until nine that Talbot felt that he had really nailed it. 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.040 He had actually talked with his friend, an astronomer named 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:06.080 Sir John herschel Uh in a way to fix the 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.360 negatives using sodium thiosulfate, which at the time they called 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.160 sodium hypo sulfate, and found that that was what allowed it. 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:17.680 And then then he heard about the Gear and he thought, oh, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.560 because this is the era of everyone trying to get 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.120 patents for things to protect their ideas so that other 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.840 folks don't just run away with him. So he immediately 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:30.160 rushes to publication to beat the French to the punch 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.480 because he knew that the French publication about the Gears 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.320 work was coming. So he said, well, I can't drag 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.160 my feet on this and rushed ahead. Uh and this 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.920 is a story we hear over and over again in technology. 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.600 It's not you know, radio was another big one like that, 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:51.160 so television as well. So eighteen forty was the March 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:56.080 eighteen forty was really when the first photography studio that 0:16:56.160 --> 0:17:00.000 we know of opened, And it was in New York, 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.680 Oric City, and it was it was called the Dagarin 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:09.880 Parlor and it was operated by Alexander Woolcott. And uh, 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.240 so you finally had a place that was open to 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:17.760 the public. It was no longer these uh the scientists, physicists, researchers, 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:20.960 and others who were all interested in this concept. Now 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.040 it was something that ordinary people could have some access to, 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:31.840 the beginning of a long road to making photography very personal, yes, 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:37.360 and also the birth of our era of narcissism. That's 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.800 probably being unkind uh. And around around this time you 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:46.000 also started to see improvements in both lens design, camera design, 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:50.400 and the chemical processes that meant that development time had 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:53.680 decreased significantly enough where you could sit for a portrait 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.679 without having to stay absolutely still for three hours, which 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:04.400 that's good. Uh. You know. Suddenly, suddenly portraiture became more 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.120 of an attainable thing for families, and it became very 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:12.520 popular pretty early on, especially by the eighteen sixties to 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.520 the eighteen eighties. It became it was a huge movement 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:18.760 at that point, and there are lots more things that 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.800 happened from that point forward. Obviously, there was the development 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.720 of Calow type, which is a negative development process that 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:29.879 Talbot had created that made photography on paper more practical 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.720 by reducing the exposure times down to one minute. Pretty incredible. 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:37.879 At the time, Stereoscopic photography became a thing that's when 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:41.960 you take two images using cameras or lenses that approximate 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:47.560 the distance of a person's eyes. You did, and that 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.280 was very popular during the Civil War. Yes, it was exactly. Yeah, 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:53.240 you would take you would take these two images and 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.640 then you would use something called usually called a stereoscope, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.879 which was essentially a kind of a pair of glasses 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:03.760 held the two images at a certain distance from your eyes, 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.080 so when you looked at it, it creates the illusion 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.000 of depth. It's essentially a primitive three D and a 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.879 lot of them. You could adjust the lenses back and 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.280 forth until the image came in focus for you, right, Yeah, 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.240 Because of course not everyone is like our Our focal 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.720 points are a little different. Uh. It's the same thing 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.760 that we see now with various headsets where you have 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.000 ways to adjust the lenses so that if your eyes 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:29.840 are a little set, a little further apart or a 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:34.640 little closer together, because a tiny difference from the average 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:37.879 can mean you have a very different experience than someone 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:39.919 who is closer. To the end, you can still do 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.080 the exact same thing on a digital s l R 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.879 through the viewfinder. Everybody can just set it up for 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:48.399 because sometimes you'll pick up someone else's and and you're like, wow, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.320 this person has very different eyes than I do. And 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:54.920 also you can get a very similar effect to this 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.640 using Uh there there are apps on phones now that 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.680 do essentially the same thing that this is doing, only 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:06.320 they're using the the software in an app that like 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.399 a Google Cardboard as an example, where you actually go 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.520 and you buy a little cardboard headset and you turn 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:16.560 your phone landscape side, you activate the Google Cardboard app, 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.520 you slide it into the headset, and now you've got 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.800 your own little virtual reality headset. It's based on the 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.320 exact same principle as this photography. It's just in that 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.840 case you're talking about more like video animation that kind 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.280 of stuff rather than still photography. But it's the same idea. 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:34.800 Then there was the wet Colodeon process, which I don't 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.840 know if I'm even saying that correctly. Yes, oh excellent, 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:40.560 That was used to make glass negatives and was much 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.199 faster than earlier methods provided that you were able to 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.960 work quickly. Yeah, I mean you it kind of birth 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.600 the digital I mean not that, it kind of birth 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.400 the portable dark room. Yeah, because if you had everything 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:56.960 with you, you could do it in like fifteen minutes. 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:01.160 That's which was incredible speed compared to the previous methods, 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.720 and you could have huge Yeah, so you can make 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:11.920 enormous negative. Wow. So the challenge here is that the 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:15.840 the method relied upon the glass retaining that that moisture 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:19.000 on it that was used for the process, and if 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:21.840 it dried out, then your negative was ruined. So you 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:23.879 had to work quickly in order for you to be 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:26.720 able to take advantage of this. But on the flip side, 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.679 the process itself was very fast, so that was a 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:32.960 big advance. And then there was an even larger one 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:35.720 a little bit later, which was the dry plate technology. 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.000 I was developed by an English physician named Wretcher Richard 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:43.080 Leech Maddox in eight seventy one UM, which eliminates some 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:44.919 of the drawbacks of the glass approach. You didn't have 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:49.600 to have the plate remain wet for the whole process. 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.720 That's that's kind of where I get to the point 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:54.640 where I'm I say, all right, I'm gonna step back 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:57.679 from the chemistry. Obviously, I could keep going to the 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.600 point where a lot of the chemicals have changed into 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:03.840 the safer ones that we use today, and also the 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:08.720 move from glass and paper to film, but the basics 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:12.040 of what we're needed for photo manipulation to come into play. 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:15.960 All existed by this time. In fact, photo manipulation was 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:22.040 already a thing before eight UM and early manipulation. Sometimes 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.639 it was again it was perfectly innocent. It might be 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.120 that you take an image and you look at the negative, 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:29.719 and you realize from the negative that there is a 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.720 flaw of some sort. So you might alter the negative 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.520 a little bit before creating a print so that you 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.480 can compensate for some error that was made. Either the 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.720 exposure wasn't quite right, the lighting wasn't quite right, or 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:45.160 the subject moved or whatever. That may be the same 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:49.120 thing that we do today. Yeah, So it's not necessarily 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:56.159 a sinister or unethical uh motivation to manipulate a photo, 0:22:57.240 --> 0:22:59.960 but there are those as well. So if you look 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.080 at some of the earlier edits, sometimes it meant that 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.119 you would alter the negative, as I had mentioned, sometimes 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:09.800 you would alter a print um, in which case you might. 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:12.639 In fact, early, because we were limited to black and 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:17.000 white photography, you had some people who would present make 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.359 photographs and make a make a print of a photograph 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:21.879 or a negative rather and then turn it over to 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:25.240 an artist who might actually add color by painting over 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:28.480 the photograph. You want blues guys, you know you put 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:30.919 a little pant on there. Yeah. Yeah, it's the best 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:34.119 solution to the problem at the time. So that was 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:36.000