everyone's lost but me...

This is the second articles in a series I am writing for The PonF Camera Project . You can find the original post here . Daguerreotypes and the Popularization of Photography In our previous entry we looked at Nicéphore Niépce and his Heliograph , View from the Window at Le Gras . This entry focuses on his business partner Louis Daguerre. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was born on 18 November 1787 in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d’Oise, France. He was trained as an Architect, but was known for his skill at theatrical illusion and diorama painting. His fascination began when he used a camera obscura to aid in the painting of his large Diorama Paintings for his theater. When he partnered with N icéphore Niépce, his mind was always on the money-making potential of the medium of photography. In 1833 Nicéphore Niépce suddenly died, leaving all of his notes to Louis Daguerre. Daguerre would all but abandon the bitumen-based photographic process they had been working on in favour ...

This is the first in a series of articles I've written for The PonF Camera Project on the history of the photographic process. You can find the original post here . The First Photograph View from the Window at Le Gras Nicéphore Niépce, 1826 This is the oldest surviving photograph made by a camera. It is called is a Heliograph and it was produced in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce. This image is the manually enhanced version made by historian Helmut Gernsheim in 1952. T he actual plate looks like this (The dimples were caused by damage sometime after 1952): Niépce’s other pioneering work included the invention of the Heliogravure, a process used to copy drawings and engravings. He worked with Louis Daguerre perfecting many photographic processes like the Physautotype.  Niépce and his brother Claude invented the Pyréolophore, the world’s first internal combustion engine. View from the Window at le Gras was created by dissolving Bitumen of J...

Over the last 15-20 years there have been many attempts to merge traditional film photography with digital. The one that I remember most clearly was a company called EFilm . The idea was to have a digital sensor attached to a memory capture device that would fit into a film camera. It looked like 35mm film canister, with the sensor sitting over the image plane. There were other ideas out there like this, some turned out to be hoaxes , but the idea that we could have both digital and film in one unit  really stuck with me. I have making photographs for 30 or so years. My work has been a mix of both analogue and digital. I’ve shot nearly every film format from sub-miniature Minox, to 10x12 Glass plate negative. Over the last 3 ½   years I have been working nearly exclusively with the Wetplate Collodion process. What this has taught me is that image making is less about the process and more about the image itself. Several months ago I contacted Rafaello Palandri on...

There is a small window of time between dreaming and wakefulness when anything can happen. The day before you is pure, untainted and full of possibilities. The worries of the previous days have not yet fallen upon you. It is a state of bliss. When I was young I believed that during this magical time, I could wish myself to wake anywhere. I often wished to wake up in the small bedroom of my Grandmother’s house, the Burnt Umber curtains casting a warm glow in the morning light, giving me the hope that all could be right with the world. Every once in a great while, I’d open my eyes and actually be there in my Grandmother’s house. The sense of relief and accomplishment was immeasurable. I would smile the biggest smile I could and close my eyes, hoping I could wake up there all over again. Sometimes it was a dream, but sometimes it was reality. As I got older, this magical ability seemed to move to the area just outside my vision and perception, fading into a ...