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🚀 Inventions and machines 📡 Communication

Photography

Photography

📖 In short

Photography is making pictures with light. Light bouncing off a scene enters the camera and draws its picture on light-sensitive material or an electronic sensor, making a photo we can keep.

🤩 Did you know?

  • In 1727 the scientist Schulze discovered that silver salts darken in light.
  • The first photos were only black and white.
  • Color photos appeared decades after the first photos.
  • Some photographers can photograph distant stars and galaxies.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Drawing with light

The word “photography” comes from Greek and means “drawing with light”. Without light there's no picture.

🔍 The first photos

Scientists discovered that silver salts turn black when light hits them. The first photos were made from this discovery about two hundred years ago, and people had to sit still for many minutes to have their picture taken!

💡 Light and aperture

The photographer controls the amount of light: a wide opening lets in lots of light, and a small one makes the whole picture sharp from front to back. They also choose the shutter speed to photograph moving things without blur.

🎯 Take photos yourself

To take a nice photo: keep the sun behind you, hold the camera still, get close to what you're photographing, and don't always put the important thing in the middle.

🧩 Test yourself

1 What does the word “photography” mean?

2 What does photography need above all?

3 Which picture shows “Photography”?

🚀 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons