Brynn CallahanAdvanced Digital Photography

3rd Hour

William Henry Fox Talbot1800-1877

o Talbot was an intellectual, a mathematician, philosopher, classicist, Egyptologist, transcriber, & translator.

ABOUT TALBOT

o Talbot wanted to get away from the ideas of mental pictures & all of the fuss that had to do with it. His idea was to coat a piece of paper with a light-sensitive silver compound & place it onto a camera with the sensitive side facing the lens.

o The compound had to be kept in darkness before it was used in order to work, applied to the paper in a dim room, & stored in a light-tight environment while it wasn’t being used.

TALBOT IDEAS

Talbot was inspired by Thomas Wedgwood, who did a process very similar to Talbot’s forty years before hand.

Unlike Wedgwood, Talbot knew how to remove the remaining unexposed silver compound from all of his prints after they were developed.

WHO INSPIRED HIM

He used his paper as not just a photograph but rather as a negative.

He was able to use the paper negative to create multiple copies of positive prints.

He would treat another piece of paper with the silver compound & then after that, place the first developed negative paper on top of the new one. He would put the two together in a glass, then expose the frame to light.

TALBOT’S PHOTOGRAPHS & TECNIQUES

TALBOT PHOTOGRAPHS