Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot was born on 11 February 1800 in Melbury, Dorset. His father died when he was less than a year old and William and his mother lived in a number of homes until she remarried in 1804. Talbot went to Cambridge University in 1817.
Thomas Wedgwood had already made photograms which were silhouettes of leaves and other objects, but these had tended to fade quickly, due to the effect of bright light. In 1827 Joseph Nicéphore de Niepce had produced pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839, Louis Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' pictures on silver plates, to the French Academy of Sciences. Not long after Fox Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to the Royal Society. His process based the prints on paper that had been made light sensitive, rather than printing onto bitumen or copper-paper.
Fox Talbot carried on to eventually develop the three primary elements of the photographic world - developing, fixing, and printing. Even though simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it really required extremely long exposures. By accident Talbot discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not physically see it, he realised he could chemically develop the image into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then tampered with a chemical solution. This happened to remove the light-sensitive silver and enable the whole image to be viewed in continuous bright light. With the negative image created, Talbot realised he could again, repeat the process of printing from the negative. Therefore, his process could make any number of completely positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes that Louis Daguerre had invented. Talbot called this the 'calotype' and utilised the process in the year 1841. Talbot was rewarded with a medal from the Royal Society for his work a year after he discovered this new way of developing.
Thomas Wedgwood had already made photograms which were silhouettes of leaves and other objects, but these had tended to fade quickly, due to the effect of bright light. In 1827 Joseph Nicéphore de Niepce had produced pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839, Louis Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' pictures on silver plates, to the French Academy of Sciences. Not long after Fox Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to the Royal Society. His process based the prints on paper that had been made light sensitive, rather than printing onto bitumen or copper-paper.
Fox Talbot carried on to eventually develop the three primary elements of the photographic world - developing, fixing, and printing. Even though simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it really required extremely long exposures. By accident Talbot discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not physically see it, he realised he could chemically develop the image into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then tampered with a chemical solution. This happened to remove the light-sensitive silver and enable the whole image to be viewed in continuous bright light. With the negative image created, Talbot realised he could again, repeat the process of printing from the negative. Therefore, his process could make any number of completely positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes that Louis Daguerre had invented. Talbot called this the 'calotype' and utilised the process in the year 1841. Talbot was rewarded with a medal from the Royal Society for his work a year after he discovered this new way of developing.
Talbot's Camera
Here in this image are several camera's that Talbot used throughout his photographic success and recognition. These particular camera's Talbot used are in fact more sophisticated than the wooden cameras he used around the 1830's, Talbot started using camera's like these when he discovered his new Calotype process. Talbot developed the first cameras to make photographic negatives, from which multiple prints could be made. He built on the optical principles of aids used by artists - the camera lucida and camera obscura. Employing sheets of writing paper prepared with washes of silver nitrate and common salt, Talbot used wooden cameras including this one, to develop the process, it was a significant improvement from the previous Dageuerre system, which used a polished, silver plated, copper plate for each image.
Talbot's Workflow
This image produced by Fox Talbot, has been captured well. By using a main point of focus in the further foreground of the image, Talbot is creating a point of interest for the viewer, however he has also contemplated leading lines within the image by taking the image level with the surface of the ground ensuring the architecture is positioned in parallel lining to each other, this creates more drama and focus within the image but also establishes a strong composition.
This particular image produced by Talbot is one of my favourites. The reason for this being; is the fact that Talbot has ensure the composition of the image will be the best method of ensuring the viewer is attracted to the simplicity within the image itself. By developing the image in his unique way, Talbot has created a large essence of contrast and juxtaposition within the image, there is a distinctive contrast between both sepia looking colours in the image, making the centralised object more dominant however there is also a contrast between the smooth flowing background and the rough cutting edge leaves in the foreground, again creating a higher level of dominance and attention for the leaf.
This image is a developed print of a self portrait Talbot has produced of himself. Here in this image we can see the texture created by the calotype process in the background and throughout the black, white, shadows and highlights in the image. However overall the image is reasonably sharp in terms of the shapes displayed in the image compared to nowadays technology where photographers can remove dirt and texture that is unwanted in the image, fringing around the edges of objects in the frame and even chromatic aberration in areas where it can even be difficult to identify with the human eye.