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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: What do you do when you are literally witnessing the last moments of an art you have devoted your life to?

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Prairie Fire Volume 15 Number 2, ed. Candas Jane Dorsey, 1994
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2002

37 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [78 KB], eReader (PDB) [30 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [17 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [16 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [66 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [87 KB], hiebook (KML) [68 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [49 KB], iSilo (PDB) [14 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [17 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [45 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [27 KB]
Words: 5181
Reading time: 14-20 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"The best story in the issue is Derryl Murphy's "The History of Photography," which recounts with calm detail a man setting up elaborate, old-fashioned camera gear near a babbling brook to take two photographs. Alternating sections describe the history of photography, from its obscure beginnings through its burgeoning as an art form in the 20th century to its revolution by electronics. And then it all goes digital. Too often, sf in its cautionary mode takes a knee-jerk, conservative reaction to new technology, bemoaning the comfort and familiarity of what is being lost. Too rarely does a story like this one take the time to detail the art of what is being lost, and show us what it means to people, and make us feel the loss as much as they do."--Mark R. Kelly, November 1994 Locus Magazine

There are many people who think that the camera is a relatively new device in mankind's long list of inventions. They're wrong. While photography itself is fairly new, the camera as a concept is an old and venerable idea.

Some nomads in the Middle East and Northern Africa probably understood the concept. Imagine sitting in a dark tent in the middle of a hot and sunny day, with a tiny hole in the fabric on one wall of the tent. The hole would act a bit like a lens, casting a faint inverted image on the inside of the opposite wall of their tent.

We in the west, however, have our caucasiocentric point of view. So to us the camera obscura was a revolution from around the time of the Renaissance.

The idea behind the device was understood in Europe as early as the year 1435, and by 1525 people were using it as an aid for portraiture. Paintings and drawings, of course, not yet photography.

For those who don't know what the camera obscura is, think of a basic automatic single lens reflex (SLR) camera. If you understand that without the prism the image would be upside down and backwards, then you already have a good grasp.

Now imagine, instead of a complex electronic machine all you have is a box. At one end of the box in the exact center of its face, rather than a lens you have a pinhole. Light that shines through the pinhole is turned upside down and backwards, shining an inverted image on the opposite end.

Take this simple box and add to it a knowledge of optics. A lens in place of the pinhole, and a piece of ground glass at the opposite end. Put a piece of tracing paper on the ground glass and begin to draw. A recipe for a near-flawless portrait or landscape.

There were other tools as well, but it was primarily the camera obscura that paved the way for photography.