19.8.11

World Photography day ...

Carlos Alves de Sousa
President of United Photo Press
Congratulations to all members of the United Press Photo by World Photography day ...

Imagery in the world quite like ours is today, the picture is present at all times. Be the cameras, digital, mobile phones and other gadjets, the image became a central element in this world mediatized, which is nothing more than a "global village photo."


But today the picture has such a prominent position can be changed, transformed and manipulated, much is due to the inventors of the concept.

Two French noteworthy in this discovery: Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Jean Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Niepce was the precursor, combining elements of chemistry and physics, created in 1926 heliography. In this invention the principle he joined the chamber bscura, employed by artists from the sixteenth century, the característicafotossensível of silver salts. After the death of Niepce, Daguerre perfected the invention, rebranding it as a daguerreotype.


By this time a Frenchman living in Brazil, Hercules Florence, also developed experiments that would lead to the same result. But the advent of photography was officially announced to the world, in Paris, the French Academy of Sciences, enshrining the Daguerreotype on August 19, 1839.Since then the picture has changed considerably and was largely responsible for introducing the world to humanity. Even with the emergence of other forms of display of images (film, television, computer), the picture remains the only "able to capture the human soul." Or, as Henri Cartier-Bresson would say, one of the greatest photographers of all time "photography is to capture the decisive moment."



Photography is a recording technique using mechanical and chemical or digital image on a layer of material sensitive to light exposure, known as its support.


 The word derives from the Greek words AEEA [fossil] ("light"), and ³ Á ± Æ ¹ Â [GRAFIS] ("style", "paintbrush") or ³ Á ± æ ¯ graph, meaning "drawing with light" or "representation by means Lines "," draw ".


Essence Photography
The discussion about the use of photography is preceded by an attempt to understand his image, which has occurred since its development by various photographers throughout the nineteenth century (as Geoffrey Batchen says). His obvious artistic character is an obstacle to its use by the social sciences, while its scientific character to become something of a subordinate in the field of art, characteristics that seem to reverse in the second half of the twentieth century, to the extent that the study of this medium is deepened, the social sciences were opened to the impossibility of complete objectivity, and the field of art has to deal strongly with the idea, as opposed to an emphasis on the art form.


Historical studies on the photo starts around one hundred years after its invention. Since the theoretical studies on the photo appear to begin after the war, and the main theory used to characterize the photo comes from the field of semiotics, or semiology of Saussure's declines.


In a strict reading of Charles Sanders Peirce, defining the field of semiotics, from photography to define the three categories of sign, which exist in order of importance and dependence on each other: the icon, which is a qualitative representation of a object - for example, by analogy (in the case of the photographic image), the index, which features a sign which refers to the signifier by causality or by contiguity (sometimes differentiated as index, as in reading Umberto Eco), and symbol, whose relationship with the signifier is arbitrary and defined by an agreement (in the case of a flag of a country, for example).

However, initial studies of photography, as well as artists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century were concerned with the problem of iconicity of Photography, that is, the potential of your image and character of its realism. The first sign of questioning this type of discourse is the work of Walter Benjamin, whose text "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," reveals a concern with the modification of the reception of photography and film in relation to traditional means of art, pioneering and highly influential study that takes instances unique, like the problem of aura (as distinct from classical art) as well as the massive multiplication of the image.

It is the work of Roland Barthes that we see a second moment of the attempt to treat the medium of photography. Barthes's work involves the construction of structuralism, and his reading of the work of Peirce. But Barthes's universe is not just the sign to the universe: his great book on Photography, "Camera Clara," has a phenomenological point of view (which refers to the Photo noema concept of Husserl's phenomenology), and uses elements of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Throughout the work of Barthes, the photo is read a key feature of structuralism dialogue, involving the creation of concepts such as connotation and denotation, or dull and obvious, until the development of the pair studium / punctum, which are no longer poles between which the photo exists, but states of Photography: How studium, the photo is displayed as indifferent object of study, while the expression defines the punctum opening of a phenomenon in which subject and photo will affect them.

One of the legacies of reading Barthes on photography is the perceived importance of the concept of "index", which is developed later in the work of Rosalind Krauss (in "Photo", and "The originality of the Vanguard"), Jean -Marie Schaeffer ("The poor image"), and Philippe Dubois ("The Photographic Act"). This relationship has not only been used in the field of art, as Krauss suggests, but has allowed the use of photography increasingly in the social sciences.


Image forming devices
The Photography stabilizes as industrial process in the twentieth century articulating a camera or camera obscura as a device forming an image recording mode and image light - a light-sensitive surface, which may be photographic film, photographic paper or in the case of photography digital, a digital sensor CCD / CMOS that turns the light on a map of electrical impulses, which are stored as information in a digital storage card. In this process it is evident the relationship between photography and its allied processes. For example, a photocopy or xerography machine, permanent images but uses the transfer of static electrical charges rather than photographic film, hence the term electrophotography. In rayographs, published by Man Ray in 1922 are images produced by the shadows of objects on photographic paper, without the use of camera. And you can place objects directly from the scanner (scanner) to produce pictures electronically.
 


Photographers control the camera to expose the photosensitive material (or film) to light, which is altered qualitatively and quantitatively according to the possibilities of each instrument. The controls are often interrelated, for example, exposure varies according to the aperture (which determines the amount of light) multiplied by the shutter speed (which determines exposure time), which varies the tone of the picture, the depth of photographic field and the degree of temporal cut the model pictured. Different focal length lenses to vary the depth of the conformation iagem as well as its angle.
 


The controls of the camera may include:
 
Focus

Opening the lens
Exposure time (or aperture, shutter speed)
Fixed focal length of objective: (tele-objective, normal or wide), or variable (zoom)
Sensitivity of the film
Photometer


Uses of photography
Photography can be classified as a technology of making images and attracts the interest of scientists and artists since its inception. The scientists used their ability to make accurate recordings, such as Eadweard Muybridge in his study of human and animal locomotion (1887). Artists also became interested in this aspect, and also tried to explore other ways besides the photomechanical representation of reality, as the pictorial movement. The military, police and security forces use photography for surveillance, identification and data storage. Aerial photographs were used to survey land use and planning of a particular region.


Brief history of photography 
The first photograph is an image produced in 1826 by Frenchman Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea photosensitive. It was produced with a camera, and required about eight hours of exposure to sunlight. In 1835 Daguerre developed a process using silver on a copper plate called the Daguerreotype. Although several researchers that develop over the nineteenth century photography, as the historian Geoffrey Batchen in his book, Burning with Desire, it is considered that the date of invention of photography is the date on which the process of Daguerre to the French National Assembly on January 7, 1839.
 

Almost simultaneously, William Fox Talbot developed a different process called calotype, using paper sheets covered with silver chloride. This process is very similar to the photographic process in use today, as it produces a negative that can be reused to produce several positive images. Hippolyte Bayard also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it and was not recognized as its inventor.

In Brazil, the French living in Campinas-SP Hercule Florence achieved results superior to those of Daguerre, developed as negative, but despite attempts to spread his invention, which he called "photography" - was the rightful inventor of the word - did not get recognition at the time. His life and work were not fully redeemed in 1980 by Boris Kossoy. The daguerreotype has become more popular as it responded to the demand for portraiture emerging middle class during the Industrial Revolution.

This demand, which could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, must have given the impetus for the development of photography. None of the techniques involved (the camera obscura and the photosensitivity of silver salts) was discovered in the nineteenth century. The camera obscura was used by artists in the sixteenth century, as an aid to sketching paintings, and photosensitivity of a solution of silver nitrate was observed in 1724 by Johann Schultze.

Recently, the modern photographic process suffered a series of refinements and improvements on the grounds of William Henry Fox Talbot. The picture has become for the mass market in 1901 with the introduction of Kodak Brownie camera, and in particular, with the industrialization of production and film development. Very little has changed since the principles, as well as color film has become standard, the auto focus and auto exposure.

The digital recording of images is increasingly dominant, as electronic sensors become more sensitive and able to provide definition in comparison with chemical methods. For the photographer lover of photography in black and white, little has changed since the introduction of the Leica 35mm film in 1925. Part of the culture the figure of the photographer Lick lick, a professional who was in the streets taking pictures commercially, when buying a camera was very difficult due to its high commercial value.

The photography in everyday life andPhotography can be used in the investigation of the daily lives of our students, so that the images obtained by the school, family, neighborhood, city and things that surround them, they are guided through a specific methodology for analysis and study of these "moments documented" and its historical correlations, social, geographical, ethnic and economic, education, the mere availability of technological apparatus does not mean to facilitate the teaching-learning process. It is necessary that the teacher combines the technological resources with their knowledge and teaching strategies aimed at achieving a goal: the actual knowledge of the image provided through photography.

The photography was born in black and white, or rather black on white, in the early nineteenth century. From the earliest forms of photography became popular, like the daguerreotype, about the decade of 1823, to the current black and white films, there were many developments in technology and lower costs. The current films today have a wide range of tone, superior even to the color, resulting in images rich in detail. So the pictures taken with PB films are superior color images converted to PB.The half-tone black and white photographs are characterized by a wealth of passages from hues, the color photograph, however, does not properly capture the subtle nuances of tonal changes. We can say, therefore, that the black and white photography is more appropriate to capture mid-tones. At P & amp; amp; B takes advantage of light and shadow effects that make it more beautiful - so much so that there are those who shoot only black and white even with the advent of digital equipment. Thus, it precipitated the debate that puts into question the chemical processes black and white front of the digital technology.

Color photography was explored during the nineteenth century and the early experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. During the half century that the emulsions available were not yet fully capable of being sensitized by the color green or red (full red sensitivity was only achieved with complete success in the early twentieth century).The first permanent color photo was taken in 1861 by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The first color film, Autochrome, just hit the market in 1907 and was based on dyed dots of potato. The first modern color film, Kodachrome, was introduced in 1935 based on three colored emulsions. Most modern color films, except Kodachrome, are based on technology developed by Agfacolor in 1936. Instant color film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.Color photography may form images as a positive transparency, intended for use in a slide projector (slides) or color negatives, intended for use in positive color enlargements of specially coated paper. The latter is currently the most common form of color photographic film (not digital), following the introduction of automatic photo print equipment.
Digital Photography
Digital photography is a photograph taken with a digital camera or some cell phone models, resulting in a computer file that can be edited, printed, sent by e-mail or stored on CD-ROMs or websites.Traditional photography was a considerable burden for photographers working at remote locations (as the correspondent of news organizations) without access to production facilities. With increasing competition from television, there was an increasing pressure to transfer images to the newspapers soon.

Photographers in remote locations would carry a mini-lab photo with them, and some means of transmitting their images through the telephone line. In 1990, Kodak unveiled the DCS 100, the first commercially available digital camera. Its cost precluded the use of photojournalism and professional applications, but digital photography was born.

In 10 years, digital cameras have become consumer products, and are likely to gradually replace their traditional counterparts in many applications because the falling price of electronic components and image quality improves.
Kodak announced in January 2004 it would no longer produce reusable 35 mm cameras after the end of this year. However, the photograph "net" will last, as dedicated amateurs and skilled artists preserve the use of traditional materials and techniques.

In digital photography, light sensitizes a sensor called a CCD or CMOS, which in turn converts the light into electronic digital code, an array of digital numbers (frame with the color values ​​of all pixels in the image) to be stored on a memory card. Typically, the contents of this memory will later be transferred to a computer. It is also possible to transfer data directly to a printer, to generate an image on paper, without using a computer.
Once moved from the memory card, it can be erased and reused.
Virtual albumsWith the popularity of digital photography, there were websites specialized in storing photographs. Your images can be viewed by anyone on the planet.
They are organized by folders and can be separated by your choice matters.
 

Virtual Albums can be used for various purposes, here are some:
 
Portfolio: Widely used by amateur photographers / professionals to showcase their work.
Storage: Who does not want taking up space on your hard drive can use the album to store your photos.
Business: Others use albums to sell your photographic work.

Photojournalism
Photojournalism meets a clearly defined function and has its own characteristics. The impact is fundamental. The information is essential. It is in press photography, an arm of documentary photography, which gives a great picture of the role of information, photojournalism. It is in photojournalism that photography can display all his ability to convey information. And this information can be passed with beauty, the simple framework that the photographer is able to do. Nothing happens today in the print communications without the endorsement of the photograph.


There are basically four kinds of news photography:The social photographs: In this category are included the picture politics, economics and business, and pictures of events of general facts of the city, state and country, including a picture of tragedy.Sports Photos: In this category, the amount of information is the most important and what affects their publication.

Photos cultural:
This type of photography, its function is to draw attention to the news before it is read and the picture it is unique. In this item we can put a large second group, sports, photojournalism because in the best-selling after the police is a sport.
 
The police photographs: many, almost all the papers explore the sensational to show accidents with death, marginal in the act, to sell more newspapers and make an average with subscribers. You could say that there is a rivalry between the newspaper to see which one that shows the most shocking scene in a robbery, death, accident's big.

The picture in the media, especially in print (newspapers, magazines and brochures) is the most important, without an image, the material is poor.

The black and white photograph published in newspapers, there is more than one hundred years and is a feature of photojournalism. Although color photography has gained ground in this category, in the early 70's with the weekly magazines.
 
Peripheral Vision
Over the time the photo-reporters develop what we call peripheral vision, a greater degree of visão.Os degree view of the reporter increased by having to care for distance and near, clear example of this is football, where both ends are used.

Independent Photojournalism
The idea arose independently of photojournalism in France after World War II. He graduated agency photographers with the same goal: to have freedom of staff, discussing the work, to delve into stories and above all to fight for copyright and ownership of the original negatives. The Co-operative Magnum Agency founded in 1947 in Paris by four photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger, was the pioneer. The movement for the reconstruction of Europe and technological progress required by the ravages of war propelled the creation of a new way to make and sell the photograph and discuss its function. Paris for its geographical and ideological importance, facilitated it. The creation of this new way of procuring images would change the history of photojournalism in the world.

News agencies
Over time, the news agencies are proliferated, and today many newspapers create small and midsize agencies, touting their photographers to sell their work and networks of the internal circulation of the newspaper photographs. We can see the images on the agency or the abbreviation.

Paparazzi
With the history of the death of Princess Diana has created a folklore about the Paparazzi, photographers can get the opportunity to become famous because of their photos. Be ready with a camera in hand just to record an image that can yield much money, and reputation. The North American singer Britney Spears is often the target of paparazzi who make millions with embarrassing pictures of her at times, certain parts of the USA have already adopted policies against this type of professional.

Photograph publishedIn most of the media photographers photo published by independent gain, then you send dozens of photos and only one is published only receive it. For many, especially those who are starting something great to see your photo credit.

 
Lenses
Lenses To get a lens, a 24mm equivalent to a field of view 75 degrees, and a 300mm lens is equivalent to a field of view 12 degrees. With the fisheye lens 6mm, 8mm or 12mm, the photographer includes a field of view of over 190 degrees. A 500mm (those we see in football games, for example) to photograph only the goalkeeper on the other side of the football field. That is, lenses with values ​​less than 50mm are considered wide angle, and with values ​​above 150mm is considered telephoto.

 
PhotographerPhotographer is the person who takes photographs using a camera. It is generally considered an artist, it makes your product (picture) with the same dedication and the same way as any other visual artist. When amateur and professional photos of a particular author bases much of their income in this activity, is said to be a professional photographer.
Sometimes, the adjective is used erroneously in professional photography to enhance a particular skill or photographic image of an author. Actually, the photo quality is not always related to the fact of its author or not professional. Many amateurs perform regularly images more successful than many professionals.
In fact, "professional" refers only to the profession of the author and not the quality of work. While a professional can do a job poorly done, can be understood better later in the piece of "art." The adjective amateur, when assigned to a photographer, can have a very broad meaning. People who just photograph your family and life, for personal use, consider themselves amateur photographers. Other amateur photographers get to publish books, conduct exhibitions and a lifetime devoted to the study of photography.
 
Photographer specializationsOnce the photo is currently a wide range of issues and goals, there are spe. The photographer specializing best to master the technique of a certain type of photograph or subject. The best-known specialties are the photo story (social events), fashion, photojournalism, landscape, portrait and advertising (the art object photography studio).

 
Formation of a photographer
The training in photography at art school can take place through a photography course or integrated into various disciplines of photography courses in art, design, painting, multimedia, film, journalism and so on. Usually these courses are geared to the pursuit of photography as art. In a professional school, training in photography is more geared to the pursuit of commercial photography as a profession.

Photography and memoryIn the picture is the absence, the memory, the separation of those who love, people who have died, those who disappeared. For some people, photography is a pleasurable act, or appearing to be mimicking something that exists. For others, it is the need to prolong the contact, proximity, desire that the relationship persists.
Strelczenia, 2001, cited in Debray (1986, p. 60) notes that the image is born of death, such as denial of nowhere and to prolong life, such that between the represented and its representation there is a soul transfer. The image is not a simple metaphor of the missing, but "a real metonymy, a sublimated continuation, but his physical flesh."
 
The photo makes people remember their past and make them aware of who they are. The knowledge of the real and the essence of individual identity depends on memory. The memory links the past to the present, it helps to represent what happened at the time, because before uniting with now have the ability to see the transformation and somehow figure out what will come.
The photograph captures a moment, highlights a moment, that is, the time it stops running and not have changes. When looking at a photograph is important to appreciate the jump between the time the object was clicked and the present in which we contemplate the image, but the time taken is able to contain the before and after.
Trust is, therefore, the ability of the camera to keep the moments that are considered valuable. Taking photographs helps fight nothing, oblivion. To remember is necessary to retain some fragments of experience and forget the rest. It is rather the moments that are lost that we can save. According Strelczenia (2001), "Memory is recalling awards, making memorable, is punished with forgetting."
Photographs to remember, because the events end and the photographs remain, but we do not know if those moments were significant in themselves or become memorable for having been photographed.
The memory is constitutive of the human condition: man has always been busy producing signals that remain beyond the future, marks that serve the very existence and give it meaning. The photo brings more than what you see. She not only captures images of the world, but can register the "revealing gesture, the expression that sums up all the life that accompanies the movement, but that destroys a fixed image to cut the time, if not essential to choose the fraction imperceptible" (CORTAZAR
, 1986, p.30)
 
This whole field of interpretation that allows the picture component of many factors, ingredients that act deeply (not always visible) on the meaning of the image. According to Lucia Santaella and Winfried Nöth (2001), these elements are: the photographer, agent, photographer, and the machine world, ie, the photographic act, the phenomenology of this act, the machine as a medium, the photograph itself; the relationship with the referent of the photo, the photo distribution, ie, its reproduction, the reception of the picture, the act of seeing it.
It is in the photo essay that the person seeking the thrill, something she has never felt. Photography is able to wound, to move or animate a person. For each it provides a kind of affection. In the composition of meaning of the picture, according to Barthes (1984), there are three main factors: the photographer (operator), the object (spectrum) and observer (spectator). The photographer sets his sights on the subject, he infects and causes the photos from his point of view. The object (or model) changes in front of a lens, simulating a thing is not. In the case of the observer, it generates a field of more significance, throwing all his repertoire and changing the image once again.

Barthes (1984, p. 45) also notes the presence of two elements in the picture, what the photographer wanted to convey is called studium, ie, it is obvious what is intended. However, when there is a detail that was not pre-produced by the author, is called punctum. The latter creates a new meaning to the observer, wounds, crosses, messes with your interpretation.
 

Through the photographs we discover the ability to obtain whole layers and emotions that are hidden in memory. You can also discover and acquire new meanings in those moments were not explicit.
To recognize the studium is inevitably find the intentions of the photographer, into harmony with them, approve them, dicuti them in myself, because the culture (which has to do with the studium) is a contract between creators and consumers . (...) The second element that runs counter to the studium then call punctum. This time, I'm not going to search him, that he is part of the scene, like an arrow, and comes pierce me.
(Barthes, 1984, p. 48). The images are apparently silent. Always, however, provoke and lead to a multitude of discourses around them.

Photography as art
Man has always tried to retain and secure movements of the world, starting with cave drawings, through painting on canvas and sculpture, and finally getting the picture. This is a means of mass communication and is very popular today and born in the Industrial Revolution.
According to Barthes (1984, p. 21), many do not consider art to be easily produced and reproduced, but its soul is true to interpret reality, not just copy it. There are a number of symbols organized by the artist and the receiver interprets and more complete repertoire of symbols.


Making Photography is not just squeezing the trigger. There must be sensitivity, recording a unique, singular. Photographer recreates the outside world through the aesthetic reality. In a world dominated by visual communication, photography comes only to add, can be art or not, all depends on the context, the time involved in image icons. It is the observer to interpret the image, adding to her repertoire and feeling.



"Shooting is put in the same line of sight your head, eye and heart."(Henri Cartier-Bresson)Photography StudioOne of the advantages of a big studio, is to allow a greater distance between subject and background. Under conditions with little space, it is difficult to light the two separately, and there is the danger of the shadows of the reason to form on the bottom. Lighting the background independently, it can be transformed hundreds of ways.Give it a gradual enlightenment, illuminating the top and bottom in different ways. Alternatively, design forms and colors on the bottom, putting on the lights masks (called gobos) or color transparencies. The rolls of white paper or black are the funds most used and most versatile. The rolls may be suspended from the top of the wall of a studio, and then pulled up and down flat on the floor of the studio, creating a curvature so that the junction of the wall with the floor is not visible in the photographs. As the paper will marring or soiling, cuts off that part and pull up more paper roll There are a variety of funds for sale through retail stores, but know that the simple backgrounds often work best, since not divert attention, and because a small studio is not always possible to blur the more elaborate forms that the fund may have.


Shutter speed
The time during which the shutter remains open determines the amount of light reaching the film. When selecting a shutter speed, make sure the camera is steady enough. The stronger you are, the lower will be the shutter speed used. Even a tiny movement during exposure can cause the entire image is blurry. Using a tripod is the only way to ensure the success of a photograph that requires a long exposure. With a telephoto lens, the instability of the camera is more noticeable than with a wide angle, so the larger the lens, the higher the shutter speed required. In addition to "freeze" the action, the shutter speed allows you to create effects that suggest movement, or special effects with the zoom.
Panning EffectIt is not always necessary to use a shutter speed as high. Often it can track the movement while shooting, to compensate, using a technique called "panning".Freeze movementThe shutter speed plays an important role in the transformation of moving subjects in a static image. The less time the shutter remains open, unless the subject moves within the frame and will be clearer. So they use a higher speed when shooting a moving subject, as to a high-speed or a horse running. There are also other factors to consider. First, the actual speed of the subject does not necessarily indicate how quickly the picture will change in the display.If a reason to go directly to the camera or away from her, the picture will change more slowly than if it passes at right angles, and will require less shutter speed to "freeze" motion. A move diagonally in the frame will need a shutter speed in between. The image size is also important: a train seen as a dot on the horizon does not appear to move as fast as a poppy teetered on a gentle breeze in front of the lens. The longer the focal length and more close to the subject, the higher the shutter speed.

Suggestions 
If you plan to expand the professional photo for the size of a poster, any movement of the subject will be much more noticeable than if you use it in thumbnails on a web page. Remember that there is movement in which many scenes which at first sight seem static: people move a photo of architecture, birds flying in a landscape and trees that bend in the wind. You may need to increase the shutter speed to compensate. A shutter speed to freeze motion completely may not give the best results. Often there is an artistic merit in suggesting speed, leaving the reason to create a blur on film.

Congratulations to all members of the United Press Photo by World Photography day ...
Carlos Alves de Sousa
President of United Photo Press