Innovations

Photography started with something called the camera Obscura in the 1830´s. The obscurer worked by projecting an image on a surface allowing the artist to trace the over the image. Chemicals was later used by scientists to create a direct copy of the image that was projected. British scientist Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877) is known as the very first photographer. He developed the calotype process where he used paper coated with silver iodide that allowed him to create a negative image. Later on cameras developed to become smaller, compact and marketed towards a rather larger audience. Brownie was the name of the camera created by Eastman Kodak. The brownie camera introduced low-cost photography to the masses. Adverts showed even children using the camera, that is how easy it was to use.

Advert for "The Brownie" Kodak camera

The camera Obscura 

One of the biggest developments in photography was the invention of ThomasEdison´s lightbulb in 1879. This new technology was very exiting and lit up the bigger cities at night. This also led to the development of flash photography. It started out as a single controlled explosion that created light to capture the image. It became easier for photographers to carry light with them and shoot in dark surroundings. Jacob Riis is one photographer who benefit from this technology. He documented the slums of New York  and without light (flash) he would not be able to capture images due to the poorer part of the population could not afford light.

Harold Edgerton (1903 - 1990) created the high speed stroboscopic flash. This revealed a lot of things that the human eye does not have the capacity to see. It is used by photographers to capture a sequence of images of a moving subject. This is an example of one photography technique that is now often seen in the advertising world.

Halftone printing:
what is printed - how it appears

Photography slowly made its way into advertising and the newspapers it did not properly sett off until the 1920´s due to it being a lot cheaper to produce illustrated images. Economical growth in the 1920´s led to an increase in consumerism. This led to competition competition in the advertising world. More companies wanted to market their product in the best and modern way possible and therefore they wanted to use photography. Printing developed from halftone printing which is a technique that simulates imagery with the use of different sized dots varying either in size of spacing.

To sum up, how has the development of camera technology changed advertising?Well, Advertising have gone from being illustrations to become printed photographs with the use of halftone printing to then becoming high quality images as we know today. From this advertising also made its way to television with moving image, then online.


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