Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was first born, one of 11 children and the son of a clergyman, on January 27, 1832.  He began at an early age entertaining himself as well as others.  He really enjoyed entertaining his family with things that he taught himself.  Some of these things included magic tricks, marionette shows, and poems written for homemade newspapers.  Carroll attended rugby school from 1846 to 1850.  He then graduated college at Christ church college, oxford in 1854.  Carroll decided to remain there and lectured on mathematics as well as writing treatises and guides for students.  Among his other qualities he also enjoyed photography.  His passion included photographing children.  One of his greatest models was Alice Liddell.  Alice was one of the three daughters of Henry George Liddell.  Henry was the dean at Christ church.  Another great work of Carroll was his children’s works.  These included “The Hunting of the Snark”, two collections of humorous verse, and the two parts of Sylvie and Bruno, and also it was said that he had unsuccessful attempts to recreate the Alice fantasies.  Lewis Carroll is remembered as an author.  He wrote the famous children’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, that he wrote in 1865, and it sequel, Through the Looking Glass. (1872) These were both published under his pseudonym.  The books were both illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. Researching Carroll was a great opportunity because I learned a lot about him that I honestly didn’t know before.  For example I had no idea he first photographed children.  I also had no idea he was the author of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland.  This was very interesting news to read and research about.  

References

Lewis Carroll biography. (n.d.). Insite Soluções Internet | Bot de Inteligência Artificial, Salas de Chat, Serviço de webmail e Mailing (e-mail marketing), Fóruns de discussão e desenvolvimento de software.. Retrieved February 6, 2011, from http://www.insite.com.br/rodrigo/text/lewis_carroll.html

 Newhall, B. (1982). The History of Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Mass Production

Mass production is the process or method of producing goods in large quantities.  This is done at a very low cost per unit.  This doesn’t mean that the large quantities of merchandise or goods are produced at low quality but produced at high quality.  This is a great way to produce more than one image or photograph in photo history.  This process could be done in a number of ways.  One being with machine tools and interchangeable parts and another way would be an assembly line.   These machines were used to make machines and this precise tolerance was brought about by a series of 19^th century innovators.  They figured out a way for industrial machine tools to be capable of cutting and shaping hard metals.  This was a great way for a lot of goods to be produced.  In factories we all think of assembly lines and this was also be traced back to the 19^th century.  The assembly line was used for meat packing and after observation of this assembly line and the mass production of this product, Henry Ford designed an assembly line that began operation in 1913.  This genius idea helped the American automobile manufacturer out a great deal in producing large quantities of high end cars.  Mass production was the rise of producing and producing mass quantities and this became a very important process to many people.  In photography they found out that instead of producing just one image or photo they could have several printed of the same image to make more money.  As mentioned before this process didn’t reproduce low quality but it produced high quality and that was a great selling point.  I feel that mass production was probably a great way for more money to be made and also made life and time a lot better for this time period.  Everything before this was done by hand which we all know took a lot more time than it needed to.  Since mass production was established less time was taken to produce more product of high quality and performance and this was a great key factor.

 References

Mass Production. (n.d.). Willamette University. Retrieved February 7, 2011, from http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/Mass_Production.html

Newhall, B. (1982). The History of Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Camera Obscura

The camera obscura is a very large version of a camera, said to be invented before the year 1300 by Roger Bacon.  Camera Obscura is Latin for dark room.  The camera obscura was invented before lenses were and the purpose of this invention was to produce images just like cameras would today.  These objects were very large, about room size.  The way this worked was each camera obscura had a very small hole on one side and the light from an outside scene would pass through the very tiny hole to create an image on the opposite wall on the inside.  This technique was used for drawings.  The image that was projected on the inside was actually seen upside down but could be traced on paper that was hanging on the opposite wall.  This invention helped lead up to what photography is today.  Camera obscuras were improved in the 16^th century and became portable boxes, which included lenses and mirrors.   Room size camera obscuras were very popular because images projected were a lot larger and could be viewed from inside the room.  By the end of the 20^th century camera obscuras decreased in popularity.  There aren’t many room size camera obscuras left today but few still remain in the United States.  After researching the camera obscura, I found this technology very interesting.  It seems like it is just like a pinhole camera that we sometimes use today but obviously room size is a lot large.  I think it would be a very cool technique to try to use and see what the image actually looks like on the inside of the room.  I wonder how clear the image actually is when it’s projected inside.  I guess ill have to create my own room size camera obscura to find out!

References

Gernsheim, H., & Gernsheim, A. (1965). A concise history of photography  . New York: Grosset & Dunlap.

Leggat, R. (2008, September 23). A History of Photography, by Robert Leggat: CAMERA OBSCURA. Some of the sites managed by Robert Leggat. Retrieved February 4, 2011, from http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/cameraob.htm