The Decisive Moment

I was doing a bit of browsing - as you do - and came across the oldest example of a permanent photograph. If you click the image above you’ll get a large version to look at.

It was produced in 1826 by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The photo is called, “View from the Window at Le Gras” and took eight hours to expose.

It’s remarkable that not even two hundred years have passed and yet technology has advanced so much that we can now not only create images with thousands of times more detail but can go from pressing the shutter release to having a processed and printed image in seconds.

If you’d like to know more about the history of photography check out this great entry on Wikipedia.