Photographic first #12 – First digital image

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Figure 1 - The first digital image made on a computer in 1957 showed researcher Russell Kirsch's baby son. From NIST and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The first digital image made on a computer in 1957 showed researcher Russell Kirsch’s baby son.
From NIST and in the public domain.

In researching yesterday’s blog about the first underwater photograph I came across another photographic first, which is shown in Figure 1 and is the first digital image ever taken.  It was taken in 1956 at the then National Bureau of Standards (NBS), today the National Institute of Standards (NIST) by NBS scientist and computer pioneer Russel Kirsch, and is a black and white scan of a photograph of Kirsch’s son, Walden.  Significantly, in 2003  the editors of Life magazine honored Kirsch’s image by naming it one of “the 100 photographs that changed the world.”

Figure 2 - National Bureau of Standards (NBS) researcher R.B. Thomas shown operating the SEAC scanner (the control console is in the background). From NIST and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – National Bureau of Standards (NBS) researcher R.B. Thomas shown operating the SEAC scanner (the control console is in the background). From NIST and in the public domain.

By today’s standards it is a mere 176 pixels on a side.  Kirsch and his colleagues developed the nation’s first programmable computer, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) and additionally created a rotating drum scanner for image scanner.  NBS researcher R.B. Thompson is shown at the extensive controls of the scanner in Figure 2.  Before you read any further take a look at your digital camera.  It contains a miniature microprocessor which is more powerful than the 1956 NBS computer used to control the scanner and for the image processing.  This room size NBS computer is shown in Figure 3.

It truly gives one pause.  Last year I discussed the first photograph ever put up on the internet.  Amazingly, this was in 1992 almost forty years after this first digital photographic image. Kirsch’s image and the work of him and his colleagues is truly a tribute to geek power and inventiveness.  It gives you a glimpse of why I love going into the lab every day.  There is nothing better than sitting down with one’s colleagues and figuring out how to do the impossible. It is truly life’s greatest privilege!

Figure 3 - The room-sized Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) was used to create the first scanned image. From the NIST and in the public domain.

Figure 3 – The room-sized Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) was used to create the first scanned image. From the NIST and in the public domain.

First underwater photograph

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Figure 1 - First underwater photograph taken on a wet colloidion plate in 1856 by William Thompson. In the puclic domain by virtue of its age.

Figure 1 – First underwater photograph taken on a wet colloidion plate in 1856 by William Thompson. In the public domain by virtue of its age.

Our recent discussion of Zena Holloway’s underwater fashion photography got me wondering about what the very first underwater photographs were.  As you might expect these entailed a major tour de force on the part of the photographer.  The first underwater photograph was taken by William Thompson in Dorset in the UK in 1856.

Thompson had a carpenter make him a waterproof, wooden box inside of which could be plaved a 4″ x 5″, wet colloidion  glass plate camera.  You will see the problem immediately.  This required a darkroom tent on shore to prepare and develop the plates all within the space of an hour.  The box had a heavily weighted shutter to which Thompson attached a string to activate the shutter from a row boat.

Along with a friend Thompson rowed out into Weymouth Bay and then lowered his camera until its tripod settled securely on a rock ledge.  This was about eighteen feet below the surface.  His exposures were about ten minutes long.  I include as Figure 1 this first underwater photograph.  One of the most appealing aspects, to me, about this photograph is that I have no idea what I am looking at.  Hopefully, it was clearer in 1856 when the picture was taken.

What you will more often see listed as the world’s first underwater photograph is the image by French zoologist Louis Boutan taken in 1893.  This image is shown as Figure 2.  It was a first both in terms of being the first underwater photograph, where both the camera and the photographer were underwater, and because it was taken with a magnesium powder flash.  Also it was the first published underwater photograph.

Figure 1 - Louis Boutan's underwater image taken with magnesium flash in 1893. In the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Louis Boutan’s underwater image taken with magnesium flash in 1893. In the public domain because of its age.

Northern Woods at Sunset

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Figure 1 - Northern Woods at Sunset, Winter, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Northern Woods at Sunset, Winter, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

We can complain all that we want about the snow and cold of winter in the Northeast.  But in its own way it is a photographer’s paradise.  There is a very special pastel quality to the sky, when it is crisp and cold.  This past weekend we have had temperatures in the 50’s F on both days.  I made it my task to clear my driveway of the ice block that forms in front of the garage because of the snow melting off the roof.  Miraculously, I succeeded and just at sunset I went out to admire my own handiwork – thinking of Shackleton’s men trying to free the endeavour.  The cloudiness of the afternoon was just beginning to break up, and there were wonderful petite billowing red and magenta clouds in a blue-violet sky that silhouetted the bare trees.  It was a short lived moment, but I grabbed my camera and took one image, before the light darkened and changed.

The street photographers of Afghanistan

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Figure 1 - An Afghan Street Photographer in 2001. From the Wikipedia Commons, picture by User bluuurgh and in placed in the public domain by the photographer under creative commons license.

Figure 1 – An Afghan Street Photographer in 2001. From the Wikipedia Commons, picture by User bluuurgh and in placed in the public domain by the photographer under creative commons license.

There was a time when you could walk down the street and photographers with large box cameras would offer to take your photograph. This was most prevalent at heavily trafficked tourist sites.  And I guess that the modern equivalent is going to an amusement park like Disney World and getting your family’s picture snapped as you plummet terrified in the dark confines of a roller coaster ride. But in most, probably all, places on Earth the large box camera is yielding to the digital world and a rapidly vanishing anachronism.

Afghanistan is one of the few places on Earth where these street photographers remaining – even there we must ask for how long.  The Afghan street photographers use a simple type of instant camera, which they call a kamra-e-faoree.  What is most fascinating is that these hand-built contractions serve as both camera and darkroom.  After taking your picture the photographer places a black cloth over the camera, opens a side door, and develops the image.  One of these Afghan photographer is shown in Figure 1.

It is all really fascinating. And it is the aim of the Afghan Box Camera Project  to create a lasting record of the methods and the work of these dedicated photographers.  On the Afghan Box Camera website you can find instructions on building and  using a kamra-e-faoree, as well as background on the history of Afghan street photographer, and most significantly extensive examples of the work of these street photographers.  If you think that large format photography is difficult to practice when you have all the advantages of modern cameras and materials visit this site.

Majestic elms

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I’ve spoken about the beauty of trees, of their appeal to a mythic chord within us, and of some of the great photographers, like Beth Moon and Ansel Adams, who have excelled in capturing this special subject.  So not surprisingly I was taken this past Sunday by Guy Trebay’s column in the New York Times Sunday Review about the majestic, vaulting row of elm trees that stretches from 110th to 59th Streets in New York’s Central Park.  Central Park was meant to be a gift top the people of the city and these trees are there for anyone, who pauses long enough from the brutal bustle of the city in winter and looks or photographs.  Indeed the column is accompanied by a beautiful image of the snow covered elms along Poet’s Walk in Central Park by New York Times photographer Craig Blankenhorn. And this image demonstrates that there is beauty even on the gloomiest of winter days – ready to be captured by the camera.

Photographers, of course, are always looking.  And in this sense they really do pause to smell the roses.  If you do a simple Google or Bing search of “Poet’s Walk,” you will find a century’s worth of some really beautiful and wonderful images of Olmstead’s gift to New Yorker’s.  It is spectacular in all seasons.

Figure 1 - Vaulting elms lining Lafayette Street in Salem, Massachusetts in 1910. From the Wikipedia and reproduced from an original postcard published by the Hugh C. Leighton Company, Portland, Maine In the public domain because of age.

Figure 1 – Vaulting elms lining Lafayette Street in Salem, Massachusetts in 1910. From the Wikipedia and reproduced from an original postcard published by the Hugh C. Leighton Company, Portland, Maine In the public domain because of age.

Great vaulting rows of elms used to line and shade the Main Streets (and Elm Streets) of many American towns.  I include as illustration Figure 1, which show’s Lafayette Street in Salem, Massachusetts in 1910. But most have fallen victim to Dutch Elm Disease.  I remember, as a graduate student at Cornell University in the 1970’s watch the last fight by these glorious trees that once lined the center of the campus.

Winter is ripe with photographic guilt.  There is great beauty outside, but it is also very cold.  So I have to say that Mr. Trebay’s column and Mr. Blankenhorn’s photograph have inspired me anew to venture out in the New England winter to record the glory of trees in snow.

Zena Holloway’s magical underwater world

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I promised you some really gorgeous photographic “shtick” today and I am going to deliver.  Someone posted a link to this on one of the Facebook Photo Groups and I was truly amazed and well, bewitched by the imagery. So I’d like to introduce you to the spectacular and truly magical photographs of fashion photographer, Zena Holloway. Ms. Holloway is both a highly talented photographer and an experienced diver.  Her “shtick” is to photograph her models floating under water, usually with equally spectacular clothing floating like ethereal gossamer.  All of this combines to titillate our sense of wonder, of dreaming of merpeople, of defying both gravity, and the need for oxygen.  I for one am totally captivated.

And in directing you to some of her photographs, I am at a loss as to where to begin or which to chose.  For pure magic let’s begin with the image of a woman swimming and entwined with the light of a jelly fish – certainly a hugely difficult picture to construct.  Then there is this wonderful picture of an encounter between a  child and a seal, a touching interspecies moment.  And finally basic, but really intriguing, is this picture of a swimmer with a horse in “Open Water.”. There is a huge amount of work and talented in setting up this kind of shot and elaborate reworking and combining in the light room. The more of Ms. Holloway’s pictures I look at the more I am enchanted.

Photographic shtick and gimmickry

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Figure 1 - "I wait" by Julia Margaret Cameron Wait. The model was Rachel Gurney. From the Wikipedia Commons and the Getty Museum. In the public domain because it is more than a hundred years old.

Figure 1 – “I wait” by Julia Margaret Cameron Wait. The model was Rachel Gurney.This kind of Christian allegorical image was one of Cameron’s shtick. the Wikipedia Commons and the Getty Museum. In the public domain because it is more than a hundred years old.

I wanted to talk today a little about shtick and gimmickry in photography. According to the Wikipedia, “shtick,” which can also be spelled “schtick,” is derived from the Yiddish word shtik (שטיק), meaning “piece”; the closely related German word Stück has the same meaning.  But that’s really not what it means.  Shtick is often used in the context of comedy – Henny Youngman’s shtick was his violin.  I can just see most of my readers, Henny Who?  Henny Youngman was a comedian who played the violin, it was his shtick or trademark.  Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  The word shtick kind of means trademark, or what sets that person apart from the crowd by creating instant recognition. Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan share a shtick.  They both make cameo appearances in their movies.

If you see a glorious western vista, you immediately think of Ansell Adams, that was his shtick regardless of whether he actually took the photograph.  A great example of photographic shtick is Murad Osmann’s photographic Instagram series/blog “Follow me,” where the photographer and consequently the viewer is led around the world by the back reached hand of his beautiful girlfriend, Nataly Zakharova.  This is what Osman does, you immediately recognize a photograph as being his, and he has attained, well, viral internet recognition.  Similarly we have Diane Arbus, who is famous for her photographs of “deviant and marginal people.”. (I am not sure that I am happy with that phrase, but it is what the wiki on Arbus uses.” But again, such a photograph brings immediate recognition as being either by Arbus or derivative of her.

But then we move into a grayer territory.  Consider, for instance, the mirror distortion photographs that we have previously discussed by Andre Kertesz.  Once again such an image of a nude woman distorted in a circus mirror is immediately associated with Kertesz, but because Kertesz did so many different types of images in his lifetime  his distortion photographs are more a series or a study set, then true persistent shtick.  Likewise, Edward Weston’s salad photographs.

It is a marvelous fact that everyone, who takes and practices photography seriously, brings a unique and recognizable fingerprint to their craft.  One of the best ways to discover yours is to do a theme set of pictures – that is give yourself an assignment to take a series of connected photographs of some particular subject.  You know boats, other photographers taking pictures, hummingbirds, whatever.  Look for the similarities in your vision.  What is it that you always do?

And developing a shtick can be a short cut to achieving ephemeral fame.  This is finding your photographic voice and then adding just a bit of predictable spontaneity, and you’ve got shtick.

My reason for bringing this up, is that I’d like to add the word “shtick” to the Haiti and Skoll vocabulary.  And, by the way, there is nothing wrong with shtick.  It can be really fun, really unique, and truly beautiful. Tomorrow, I’m going to show you some absolutely gorgeous shtick from a contemporary photographer.  But, and for today, I’d like to share one of the little angel photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, whom we have spoken a lot about.  This kind of Christian allegory was, well you know, one of her shticks!

 

The artist at work

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Figure 1 - Daniel Chester French, American Sculptor, in his studio in 1920. Image from the Smithsonian Institution vis the Wikimedia Commons and has no known copyright restrictions.

Figure 1 – Daniel Chester French, American Sculptor, in his studio in 1920. Image from the Smithsonian Institution vis the Wikimedia Commons and has no known copyright restrictions.

I know that I use the word wonderful a lot.  Still there is a wonderful set of images on MSN showing artists and writers in their studios at work.  It is absolutely delightful! So I felt that I had to share it with all of you.  And apropos of our discussion of how the photographs gives you admittance to another time and place, where you feel at some level to be interacting with the artist, here you feel like you are meeting these people in the flesh – despite the fact that many of them are long gone to us.  Such is the magic of photography. (Psst! I say that a lot too!) I’ve got several favorites among these.  First is a portrait of Ansel Adams working in his studio on a print in 1968.  Second, is an intensely personal picture of David Hockney painting on the floor of his studio in 1967.  And finally, out of deference to a  certain reader Hunter S. Thompson in his studio in 1996.

We learn that these geniuses are just like us.  Some are neat-niks and some are slob-niks.  In some cases the studio is austere and nearly empty.  In other cases it is cluttered and reminiscent of what Joseph Campbell referred to as mythic ruins.  I have included as Figure 1 a similar type of picture of American Sculptor Daniel Chester French in his studio in 1920.  This image is more posed than the images in the series, but still presents and intimacy with the artist and places him among the relics of his own creation – relics that mimic the monumental and the classic.

Camera Optics – the single lens reflex (SLR)

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Figure 1 - Cross-section of a modern SLR camera. Image from the Wikipedia and created by CBurnett, in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – Cross-section view of SLR system: 1: Front-mount lens (four-element Tessar design) 2: Reflex mirror at 45-degree angle 3: Focal plane shutter 4: Film or sensor 5: Focusing screen 6: Condenser lens 7: Optical glass pentaprism (or pentamirror) 8: Eyepiece (can have diopter correction ability). From the Wikipedia and created by CBurnett, in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

I’d like to return today to our technical discussion of camera optics.  We have looked at what mirrors do to light and at what lens do to light.  Based on what we learned so far take a look at Figure 1 which shows the innards of a single lens reflex or SLR camera.  The first object that we see is the lens.  The lens is actually a composite of multiple lenses.  However, we know that the lens is going to invert the object on the sensor or film.  Up and down is flipped, and so is right and left.  Look at Figure 2.  If the object was the letter F (Today’s blog is brought to you by the letter F) then what appears on the sensor or film is the “lens inverted image.” This is what you see in a large format camera on the ground glass.

Figure 2 - Image inversions in a modern SLR camera. Image may be used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Figure 2 – Image inversions in a modern SLR camera. Image may be used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

It is also all that you need to make a camera if it is to be purely digital. This is because in a digital camera you can make all the corrections that you need computationally.  You display and store the file with all the corrections made.

The In the next generation of camera, makers decided that this inversion needed to be fixed.  By putting a mirror into the camera at a right angle they could create a “righted mirror image”  where up and down were fixed but right and left were still flipped.  You can do this with a single lens, in which case the lens needed to be flipped out of the way when the picture was taken.  A second approach was the twin lens reflex, which had two identical lens: one for the picture and one for the viewfinder.  This is, of course, a bit costly and also introduces what are called parallax effects as the object gets closer and closer to the image.

To create the right side up image of the modern SLR viewfinder, makers use a pentaprism, which is actually a set of reflective (like a mirror) surfaces that multiply flip the image until it is corrected and do this in a fairly confined space.  For illustrative purposes you can follow the multiple reflections of the blue and red rays in Figure 3 to convince yourself that geometric points wind up where they need to be.  This is shown in Figure 1 and in more detail in Figure 3.  Again with the modern SLR it is necessary to flip the mirror out of the way during the exposure.  This can be done either automatically or manually before exposure if you are afraid of vibrations affecting your image.

Figure 3 - Schematic showing operation of a pentaprism in a modern SLR camera. Image from the Wikipedia created by Paul1513 and in put in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 3 – Schematic showing operation of a pentaprism in a modern SLR camera. Image from the Wikipedia created by Paul1513 and put in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.