Louis Daguerre, photography pioneer, honored with Google doodle
Happy posthumous birthday聽to Louis Daguerre, who would have turned 224 today.聽
Daguerre is the man who inspired today's Google doodle. Mr.聽Daguerre was a French painter, physicist, and pioneer in photography.聽
In the mid-1820s, Daguerre was looking for a way to capture permanent images that he saw in his camera 鈥� a large box with a lens on one end that shined an image on a frosted sheet of glass at the other. But nailing the chemistry took a lot of work.聽
First, he invented the Diorama in 1822, which was used to showcase theatrical painting and lighting effects.
In 1826, fellow Frenchman聽Joseph Nic茅phore Ni茅pce took a photograph of a barn, but the process took an eight-hour exposure.聽Daguerre formed a partnership with聽Ni茅pce, according to the聽,聽and ten years later learned how to permanently reproduce the same image in only twenty minutes.
Daguerreotype photography was born. (The name, of course, refers to Daguerre himself.) Each unique photographic image was made on a silver-coated sheet of copper exposed聽to iodine, developed in heated mercury fumes, and fixed with salt water.
Using Daguerre's photography method, naturally-moving subjects needed to remain completely still because the long exposure would take several minutes to allow the slower process to be able to capture 鈥� and focus on 鈥� the image. At least it wasn't eight hours. If a subject was to move during the process, they would appear like a blurry ghost, or perhaps disappear from the frame altogether.聽This is why, in the early days, Daguerre's landscapes did not contain any people. The process took too long for most people.聽
As faster lenses were invented, so came with it the ability to make portraits and not just landscapes.聽
