Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.[1]

Photographers at the Chicago Old Town Art Fair, 1968.

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image, either negative or positive, depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.[1]

Photographers at the Chicago Old Town Art Fair, 1968.

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image, either negative or positive, depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using6th century CE, ByzantinePhotography is the result of combining several technical discoveries, relating to seeing an image and capturing the image. The discovery of the camera obscura ("dark chamber" in Latin) that provides an image of a scene dates back to ancient China. Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid independently described a camera obscura in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.[11][12] In the 6th century CE, Byzantine mathematician Anthemius of Tralles used a type of camera obscura in his experiments.[13]

The Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) also invented a camera obscura as well as the first true pinhole camera.[12][14][15] The invention of the camera has been traced back to the work of Ibn al-Haytham.[16] While the effects of a single light passing through a pinhole had been described earlier,[16] Ibn al-Haytham gave the first correct analysis of the camera obscura,[17] including the first geometrical and quantitative descriptions of the phenomenon,[18] and was the first to use a screen in a dark room so that an image from one side of a hole in the surface could be projected onto a screen on the other side.[19] He also first understood the relationship between the focal point and the pinhole,[20] and performed early experiments with afterimages, laying the foundations for the invention of photography in the 19th century.[15]