Photography | Gentle Reading For Sleep

Unwind with this calm bedtime reading designed to support peaceful sleep and ease insomnia. This gentle session blends restful pacing with soft educational exploration to help your mind settle.

In this episode, you’ll discover the world of photography—its history, methods, and the fascinating evolution of capturing images—while drifting into a soothing state. Benjamin’s steady, comforting cadence offers relaxation without whispers or hypnosis, just peaceful learning to ease stress, anxiety, and sleeplessness. Let your thoughts soften as you settle in, breathe slowly, and allow this quiet exploration to guide you toward rest. Press play, relax deeply, and drift off.

Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about photography.

Photography is the art,

Application,

And practice of creating images by recording light,

Either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material,

Such as photographic film.

It is employed in many fields of science,

Manufacturing,

And business,

As well as its more direct uses for art,

Film,

And video production,

Recreational purposes,

Hobby,

And mass communication.

A person who operates a camera to capture or take photographs is called a photographer,

While the captured image,

Also known as a photograph,

Is the result produced by the camera.

Typically,

A lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure.

With an electronic image sensor,

This produces an electrical charge at each pixel,

Which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing.

The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image,

Which is later chemically developed into a visible image,

Either negative or positive,

Depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing.

A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base,

Known as a print,

Either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

Before the emergence of digital photography,

Photographs that utilized film had to be developed to produce negatives or projectable slides,

And negatives had to be printed as positive images,

Usually in enlarged form.

This was typically done by photographic laboratories,

But many amateur photographers,

Students,

And photographic artists did their own processing.

The word photography was created from the Greek roots φωτός,

Genitive of φως,

Light,

And γραφή,

Representation by means of lines or drawing,

Together meaning drawing with light.

Several people may have coined the same new term from these roots independently.

Hercules Florence,

A French painter and inventor living in Campinas,

Brazil,

Used the French form of the word photographie in private notes,

Which a Brazilian historian believes were written in 1834.

This claim is widely reported,

But is not yet largely recognized internationally.

The first use of the word by Florence became widely known after the research of Boris Kossoy in 1980.

On February 25,

1839,

The German newspaper,

Fassgeschütz Zeitung,

Published an article titled Photographie,

Discussing several priority claims,

Especially that of Henry Fox Talbot's in relation to Daguerre's claim of invention.

The article is the earliest known occurrence of the word in public print,

It was signed JM,

Believed to have been Berlin astronomer Johann von Medler.

The astronomer John Herschel is also credited with coining the word,

Independent of Talbot,

In 1839.

The inventors Nyssafor Nijps,

Talbot,

And Louis Daguerre seem not to have known or used the word photographie,

But referred to their processes as heliography,

Nijps,

Photogenic drawing,

Talbotype,

Calotype,

Talbot,

And daguerreotype,

Daguerre.

Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries relating to seeing an image and capturing the image.

The discovery of the camera obscura,

Dark chamber in Latin,

That provides an image of a scene,

Dates back to ancient China.

Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid independently described a camera obscura in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.

In the 6th century CE,

Byzantine mathematician Anthemius of Trales used a type of camera obscura in his experiments.

The Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham,

965-1040,

Also invented a camera obscura,

As well as a first true pinhole camera.

The invention of the camera has been traced back to the work of Ibn al-Haytham.

While the effects of a single light passing through a pinhole had been described earlier,

Ibn al-Haytham gave the first correct analysis of the camera obscura,

Including the first geometrical and quantitative descriptions of the phenomenon,

And was the first to use a screen in a dark room so that an image from one side of a hole in the surface could be projected onto a screen on the other side.

He also first understood the relationship between the focal point and the pinhole,

And performed early experiments with afterimages,

Laying the foundations for the invention of photography in the 19th century.

Leonardo da Vinci mentions natural camera obscurae that are formed by dark caves on the edge of a sunlit valley.

A hole in the cave wall will act as a pinhole camera and project a laterally reversed,

Upside-down image on a piece of paper.

Renaissance painters used the camera obscura,

Which in fact gives the optical rendering and color,

That dominates Western art.

It is a box with a small hole in one side,

Which allows specific light rays to enter,

Projecting an inverted image onto a viewing screen or paper.

The birth of photography was then concerned with inventing means to capture and keep the image produced by the camera obscura.

Albertus Magnus,

1193-1280,

Discovered silver nitrate,

And Georg Fabricius,

1560-1571,

Discovered silver chloride.

Daniele Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1566.

Wilhelm Holmberg described how light darkened some chemicals,

Photochemical effect,

In 1694.

Around 1717,

Johann Heinrich Scholz used a light-sensitive slurry to capture images of cut-out letters on a bottle,

And on that basis,

Many German sources,

And some international ones,

Credit Scholz as the inventor of photography.

The fiction book,

Givanty,

Published in 1760 by a French author,

Tiffin de La Roche,

Described what can be interpreted as photography.

In June 1802,

British inventor Thomas Wedgwood made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura,

By means of a light-sensitive substance.

He used paper or white leather,

Treated with silver nitrate.

Although he succeeded in capturing the shadows of objects placed on the surface in direct sunlight,

And even made shadow copies of paintings on glass,

It was reported in 1802 that the images formed by means of a camera obscura,

Had been found too faint to produce,

In any moderate time,

An effect upon the nitrate of silver.

The shadow images eventually darkened all over.

The first permanent photo-etching was an image produced in 1822 by the French inventor,

Lysseford Niepce,

But it was destroyed in a later attempt to make prints from it.

Niepce was successful again in 1825.

In 1826,

He made the View from the Window at Le Gras,

The earliest surviving photograph from nature,

I.

E.

,

Of the image of a real-world scene,

As formed in a camera obscura by a lens.

Because Niepce's camera photographs required an extremely long exposure,

At least eight hours and probably several days,

He sought to greatly improve his bitumen process,

Or replace it with one that was more practical.

In partnership with Louis Daguerre,

He worked out post-exposure processing methods that produced visually superior results,

And replaced the bitumen with a more light-sensitive resin.

But hours of exposure in the camera were still required.

With an eye to eventual commercial exploitation,

The partners opted for total secrecy.

Niepce died in 1833,

And Daguerre then redirected the experiments toward the light-sensitive silver halides,

Which Niepce had abandoned many years earlier,

Because of his inability to make the images he captured with them lightfast and permanent.

Daguerre's efforts culminated in what would later be named the Daguerreotype process.

The essential elements,

A silver-plated surface,

Sensitized by iodine vapor,

Developed by mercury vapor,

And fixed with hot saturated salt water,

Were in place in 1837.

The required exposure time was measured in minutes instead of hours.

Daguerre took the earliest confirmed photograph of a person in 1838,

While capturing a view of a Paris street.

Unlike the other pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic on the busy boulevard,

Which appears deserted,

One man having his boots polished stood sufficiently still throughout the several minutes long exposure to be visible.

The existence of Daguerre's process was publicly announced,

Without details,

On January 7,

1839.

The news created an international sensation.

France soon agreed to pay Daguerre a pension in exchange for the right to present his invention to the world as a gift of France,

Which occurred when complete working instructions were unveiled on August 19,

1839.

In that same year,

American photographer Robert Cornelius is credited with taking the earliest surviving photographic self-portrait.

In Brazil,

Hercules Florence had started working out a silver-salt-based paper process in 1832,

Later renaming it Fotografia,

At least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography.

In 1834,

Having settled on silver nitrate on paper,

A combination which had been the subject of experiments by Thomas Wedgwood around the year 1800,

Florence's notebooks indicate that he eventually succeeded in creating lightfast,

Durable images.

Partly because he never published his invention adequately,

Partly because he was an obscure inventor living in a remote and underdeveloped province,

Hercules Florence died in Brazil,

Unrecognized internationally,

As one of the inventors of photography during his lifetime.

Meanwhile,

A British inventor,

William Fox Talbot,

Had succeeded in making crude but reasonably high-fast silver images on paper,

As early as 1834,

But had kept his work a secret.

After reading about Daguerre's invention in January 1839,

Talbot published his hitherto secret method in a paper to the Royal Society and set about improving on it.

At first,

Like other pre-Daguerreotype processes,

Talbot's paper-based photography typically required hours-long exposures in the camera.

But in 1840,

He created the calotype process,

Which used the chemical development of a latent image to greatly reduce the exposure needed and compete with the daguerreotype.

In both its original and calotype forms,

Talbot's process,

Unlike Daguerre's,

Created a translucent negative,

Which could be used to print multiple positive copies.

This is the basis of most modern chemical photography up to the present day,

As daguerreotypes could only be replicated by re-photographing them with a camera.

Talbot's famous tiny paper negative of the Oriole Window in Lacock Abbey,

One of a number of camera photographs he made in the summer of 1835,

May be the oldest camera negative in existence.

Herter and Driffield began pioneering work on the light sensitivity of photographic emulsions in 1876.

Their work enabled the first quantitative measure of film speed to be devised.

The first flexible photographic roll film was marketed by George Eastman,

Founder of Kodak,

In 1885.

But this original film was actually a coating on a paper base.

As part of the processing,

The image bearing layer was stripped from the paper and transferred to a hardened gelatin support.

The first transparent plastic roll film followed in 1889.

It was made from highly flammable nitrocellulose,

Known as nitrate film.

Although cellulose acetate,

Or safety film,

Had been introduced by Kodak in 1908,

At first it found only a few special applications as an alternative to the hazardous nitrate film,

Which had the advantages of being considerably tougher,

Slightly more transparent,

And cheaper.

The changeover was not completed for X-ray films until 1933,

And although safety film was always used for 16mm and 8mm home movies,

Nitrate film remained standard for theatrical 35mm motion pictures until it was finally discontinued in 1951.

Films remained the dominant form of photography until the early 21st century,

When advances in digital photography drew consumers to digital formats.

Although modern photography is dominated by digital users,

Film continues to be used by enthusiasts and professional photographers.

The distinctive look of film-based photographs compared to digital images is likely due to a combination of factors,

Including 1.

Differences in spectral and tonal sensitivity,

S-shaped density to exposure,

H and D curve with film,

Versus linear response curve for digital CCD sensors.

2.

Resolution,

And 3.

Continuity of tone.

Originally,

All photography was monochrome,

Or black and white.

Even after color film was readily available,

Black and white photography continued to dominate for decades due to its lower cost,

Chemical stability,

And its classic photographic look.

The tones and contrast between light and dark areas define black and white photography.

Monochromatic pictures are not necessarily composed of pure blacks,

Whites,

And intermediate shades of gray,

But can involve shades of one particular hue,

Depending on the process.

The cyanotype process,

For example,

Produces an image composed of blue tones.

The albumen print process,

Publicly revealed in 1847,

Produces brownish tones.

Many photographers continue to produce some monochrome images,

Sometimes because of the established archival permanence of well-processed silver halide-based materials.

Some full-color digital images are processed using a variety of techniques,

To create black and white results.

And some manufacturers produce digital cameras that exclusively shoot monochrome.

Monochrome printing or electronic display can be used to salvage certain photographs taken in color,

Which are unsatisfactory in their original form.

Sometimes,

When presented as black and white or single-color tone images,

They are found to be more effective.

Although color photography is long predominated,

Monochrome images are still produced,

Mostly for artistic reasons.

Almost all digital cameras have an option to shoot in monochrome,

And almost all image editing software can combine or selectively discard RGB color channels to produce a monochrome image from one shot in color.

Color photography was explored beginning in the 1840s.

Early experiments in color required extremely long exposures,

Hours or days for camera images,

And could not fix the photograph to prevent the color from quickly fading when exposed to white light.

The first permanent color photograph was taken in 1861,

Using the three-color separation principle first published by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855.

The foundation of virtually all practical color processes,

Maxwell's idea was to take three separate black and white photographs through red,

Green,

And blue filters.

This provides the photographer with the three basic channels required to recreate a color image.

Transparent prints of the images could be projected through similar color filters,

And superimposed on the projection screen,

An additive method of color reproduction.

A color print on paper could be produced by superimposing carbon prints of the three images made in their complementary colors,

A subtractive method of color reproduction pioneered by Louis-Ducos-Durand in late 1860s.

In 1981,

Sony unveiled the first consumer camera to use a charge-coupled device for imaging,

Eliminating the need for film,

The Sony Mavica.

While the Mavica saved images to disk,

The images were displayed on television,

And the camera was not fully digital.

The first digital camera to both record and save images in a digital format was the Fujix DS-1P,

Created by Fujifilm in 1988.

In 1991,

Kodak unveiled the DCS-100,

The first commercially available digital single-lens reflex camera.

Although its high cost precluded uses other than photojournalism and professional photography,

Commercial digital photography was born.

Digital imaging uses an electronic image sensor to record the image as a set of electronic data,

Rather than as chemical changes on film.

An important difference between digital and chemical photography is that chemical photography resists photo manipulation,

Because it involves film and photographic paper,

While digital imaging is a highly manipulative medium.

This difference allows for a degree of image post-processing that is comparatively difficult in film-based photography,

And permits different communicative potentials and applications.

Digital photography dominates the 21st century.

More than 99% of photographs taken around the world are through digital cameras,

Increasingly through smartphones.

A large variety of photographic techniques and media are used in the process of capturing images for photography.

These include the camera,

Dual photography,

Full-spectrum ultraviolet and infrared media,

Light field photography,

And other imaging techniques.

The camera is the image-forming device,

And a photographic plate,

Photographic film,

Or a silicon electronic image sensor is the capture medium.

The respective recording medium can be the plate or film itself,

Or digital magnetic or electronic memory.

Photographers control the camera and lens to expose the light recording material to the required amount of light to form a latent image on plate or film,

Or raw file in digital cameras,

Which,

After appropriate processing,

Is converted to a usable image.

Digital cameras use an electronic image sensor based on light-sensitive electronics,

Such as charge-coupled device,

CCD,

Or complementary metal oxide semiconductor,

CMOS technology.

The resulting digital image is stored electronically,

But can be reproduced on paper.

The camera,

Or camera obscura,

Is a dark room or chamber from which,

As far as possible,

All light is excluded,

Except the light that forms the image.

It was discovered and used in the 16th century by painters.

The subject being photographed,

However,

Must be illuminated.

Cameras can range from small to very large,

A whole room that is kept dark while the object to be photographed is in another room where it is properly illuminated.

This was common for reproduction photography of flat copy when large film negatives were used.

As soon as photographic materials became fast enough for taking candid or surreptitious pictures,

Small detective cameras were made,

Some actually disguised as a book or handbag or pocket watch,

Or even worn hidden behind an ascot necktie with a tie-pin that was really the lens.

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera that takes a rapid sequence of photographs on recording medium.

In contrast to a still camera,

Which captures a single snapshot at a time,

The movie camera takes a series of images,

Each called a frame.

This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism.

The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed,

Called the frame rate,

Number of frames per second.

While viewing,

A person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures to create the illusion of motion.

Photographs,

Both monochrome and color,

Can be captured and displayed through two side-by-side images that emulate human stereoscopic vision.

Stereoscopic photography was the first that captured figures in motion.

While known colloquially as 3D photography,

The more accurate term is stereoscopy.

Such cameras have long been realized by using film and more recently in digital electronic methods.

Dual photography consists of photographing a scene from both sides of a photographic device at once,

E.

G.

,

Camera for back-to-back dual photography,

Or two networked cameras for portal-plane dual photography.

The dual photo apparatus can be used to simultaneously capture both the subject and the photographer,

Or both sides of a geographical place at once,

Thus adding a supplementary narrative layer to that of a single image.

Ultraviolet and infrared films have been available for many decades and employed in a variety of photographic avenues since the 1960s.

New technological trends in digital photography have opened a new direction in full-spectrum photography,

Where careful filtering choices across the ultraviolet,

Visible,

And infrared lead to new artistic visions.

Modified digital cameras can detect some ultraviolet,

All of the visible,

And much of the near-infrared spectrum,

As most digital imaging sensors are sensitive from about 350 nm to 1,

000 nm.

An off-the-shelf digital camera contains an infrared hot mirror filter that blocks most of the infrared and a bit of the ultraviolet that would otherwise be detected by the sensor,

Narrowing the accepted range from about 400 nm to 700 nm.

Replacing a hot mirror or infrared blocking filter with an infrared pass,

Or a wide spectrally transmitting filter,

Allows the camera to detect the wider-spectrum light at greater sensitivity.

Without the hot mirror,

The red,

Green,

And blue,

Or cyan,

Yellow,

And magenta-colored microfilters placed over the sensor elements pass varying amounts of ultraviolet,

Blue window,

And infrared,

Primarily red and somewhat lesser,

The green and blue,

Microfilters.

Uses of full-spectrum photography are for fine art photography,

Geology,

Forensics,

And law enforcement.

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Thank you, Benjamin! Wishing you and your family happy holidays! 😻