Today is Camera Day, so go and take some photos while the sun is shining. Remember, photographers take photos with cameras.
Joseph Nicephore Niépce (1765-1833) is credited with producing the first successful photograph in June 1827.
Above is the first known photograph. There is little merit in the photo other than that fact. It is difficult to interpret; the building is on the left, a tree a third in from the left, and a barn immediately in front. The exposure lasted eight hours, so the sun had time to move from east to west, appearing to shine on both sides of the building.
20 cm x 16.5 cm, Niepce called this a "heliograph" and it is believed to be and image of the courtyard outside his house. The current belief is that he used the lens of a crude camera and a pewter plate with a few drops of bitumen (a tar like substance) on it and exposed the plate for eight hours. It will be on display in a sealed enclosure filled with inert gas at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin beginning in 2003.
The digital reproduction is a link to another digital reproduction of higher resolution that depicts the original photograph, "View from the Window at Le Gras." This photograph is owned by the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, and was analyzed in 2002 by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
