WIlliam Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Tabot was born on 11th February 1800 in Melbury, Dorset, England into a well-connected family.
In 1833, while visiting Lake Como in Italy, after trying and failing to draw the surroundings, gave Tabot inspiration to create a new camera with light -sensitive paper that would make the sketches for him automatically.
When coming back to England, he began to work on this project at his home at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. His steps of photography was to make the photos on paper made light sensitive, rather than Niepce's bitumen and Daguerre's silver coated copper plates.
Talbot also made what we call now the three steps to photograph: developing, fixing and printing. Although showing photographic paper to a lighted subject created a photo, it took a long time. He found out by accident that a picture could be made when photographic paper was uncovered for a short time. Even though he could not see it, he discovered using chemicals he could create a negative (remember that? If you forgot its on the Collodion process page). The picture on the negative was then fixed with a chemical mix and so this got rid of the need for light sensitive silver and let the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative copy, Talbot found out he could repeat these steps of printing from a negative. He named this process the 'Calotype'
It was invented by Talbot in September 1840 and on the 8th of February 1841 was shown to the Royal Society and in the next year got a medal for his work.
Talbot's process provided small time photographers with a different method for photography instead of the Daguerreotype which many part- time photographers, scientists and artists used, in France too it was taken with excitement.
To watch a video on William Henry Fox Talbot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxFZSrKdokA
In 1833, while visiting Lake Como in Italy, after trying and failing to draw the surroundings, gave Tabot inspiration to create a new camera with light -sensitive paper that would make the sketches for him automatically.
When coming back to England, he began to work on this project at his home at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. His steps of photography was to make the photos on paper made light sensitive, rather than Niepce's bitumen and Daguerre's silver coated copper plates.
Talbot also made what we call now the three steps to photograph: developing, fixing and printing. Although showing photographic paper to a lighted subject created a photo, it took a long time. He found out by accident that a picture could be made when photographic paper was uncovered for a short time. Even though he could not see it, he discovered using chemicals he could create a negative (remember that? If you forgot its on the Collodion process page). The picture on the negative was then fixed with a chemical mix and so this got rid of the need for light sensitive silver and let the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative copy, Talbot found out he could repeat these steps of printing from a negative. He named this process the 'Calotype'
It was invented by Talbot in September 1840 and on the 8th of February 1841 was shown to the Royal Society and in the next year got a medal for his work.
Talbot's process provided small time photographers with a different method for photography instead of the Daguerreotype which many part- time photographers, scientists and artists used, in France too it was taken with excitement.
To watch a video on William Henry Fox Talbot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxFZSrKdokA