

He exposed a silver-plated copper sheet to iodine vapor, creating a layer of light-sensitive silver iodide exposed it in the camera for a few minutes developed the resulting invisible latent image to visibility with mercury fumes then bathed the plate in a hot salt solution to remove the remaining silver iodide, making the results light-fast. View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore NiépceĪfter Niépce's death in 1833 Daguerre concentrated on silver halide-based alternatives. In 1829 Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Daguerre and the two collaborated to work out a similar but more sensitive and otherwise improved process. The first photographs of a real-world scene, made using a camera obscura, followed a few years later at Le Gras, France, in 1826, but Niépce's process was not sensitive enough to be practical for that application: a camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required.

The first permanent photograph, a contact-exposed copy of an engraving, was made in 1822 using the bitumen-based " heliography" process developed by Nicéphore Niépce. The word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς ( phos), meaning "light," and γραφή ( graphê), meaning "drawing, writing," together meaning "drawing with light." History The process and practice of creating such images is called photography. Most photographs are now created using a smartphone or camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. A modern-day photograph of an Icelandic landscape, captured on a personal cameraĪ photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip.

Original (left) and colorized reoriented enhancement (right). View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827), by Nicéphore Niépce, the earliest known surviving photograph of a real-world scene, made with a camera obscura. It is an ink on paper print and reproduces a 17th-century Flemish engraving showing a man leading a horse. The earliest known surviving product of Nicéphore Niépce's heliography process, 1825.
