Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Web Work #2: Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre



After reading about Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre I found that he partnered with Joseph Niepce, which is credited for creating the first photograph, Daguerre and Niepce worked together to inprove Niepce’s photography process known as heliographs or sun prints.

After several years Daguerre worked on a process that would be more convenient and effective, he named this process after himself, Daguerreotype. Enough about history, lets look at some photos.

This is one of Daguerre’s most famous photos, taken in 1839, the photo shows what looks like empty city streets taken from an elevated position, perhaps in one of the top floors of his apartment. The street look empty because of the long expose time, but amazingly if you look towards the bottom left of the photo you can see a man standing on the corner. Its been suggested that this person was standing on the corner getting his shoes shined, one question I have is, “How long does it take to shine shoes in 1839? This photo was exposed for hours, must not have been good at his job.
The main thing that I love about this photo is the balance of shadows and highlights. Very good for one of the earlier photos.
~Friendly_Ghost

1 comment:

  1. Probably more like 10 or 15 minutes - lots of sunlight in that scene. Nice post.

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