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The First Final of the Wimbledon Championship
Photograph by: Unknown Image Source: BBC Sport Archive The Wimbledon Championship, the only grass-based major, and one of the most watched tournaments worldwide, was first organised to fund the...
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The Sole Portrait of the Elusive Artist
Vincent Willem van Gogh, one of the most prolific artists of the 19th century, who, in his short lifetime, created well around 2000 pieces of art, including 30 self-portraits, was camera shy. He felt...
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Visual Chronicler of India
In 1962, Raghu Rai began learning photography from his brother, S Paul, who was already an award-winning photographer. A few years on, he joined The Statesman as its chief photographer, and then took...
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The Tragic Life of a Divine Muse
Few have been able to express themselves as boldly, carefree and enigmatically as Virginia Oldoini, the Countess of Castiglione. Considered to be the most gorgeous woman of her time, she was shipped...
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A Blue Marvel
29,000km from the surface of the earth, the Apollo 17’s crew made this startlingly beautiful image of the planet we reside on. Titled Blue Marble, they were able to achieve a clear and illuminated...
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The Story Behind: The First Photobook Ever Published
The year was 1843, when Anna Atkins, an English botanist, became the first person to publish a book (Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions) with photographs illustrating British Algae....
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The Beginning and the End of an Era
Most brilliant ideas are the simplest ones that have gone on to change the trajectory of history. Photography is replete with such examples, one of them being carte-de-visites, also known as calling...
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The End of an Era
In 2013, due to Kodak’s slow transition to digital photography, its film production business was sold to help emerge from bankruptcy.
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Peary vs Cook: Who Reached the North Pole First?
Photograph by: Frederick Albert Cook. Image Source: Library of Congress Very few discoveries in the world have been as passionately debated upon for a century as the first expedition to the North Pole....
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The Origin of the Word Paparazzi
The word ‘paparazzi’ originates from the film La Dolce Vita by Frederico Fellini. He named one of the characters, who is a news photographer, Paparazzo, which is derived from a word in Italian that...
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Creating Colour in Photography
Photograph by: Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron Image Source: Wikimedia Commons During the mid-1800s, there was still a lot left to understand about the nature of light. Despite the limited technology of...
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American street photographer, Vivian Maier, consistently made pictures over the span of five decades, beginning in the 1950s, coinciding with the time she started working as a nanny in New York City....
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A Life of Rebellion
Photograph by: Augustus Washington Image Source: Wikimedia Commons What does the word freedom imply? What does it mean to be free? To be an African American in the 19th century was akin to being owned...
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Beauty in Abstraction and Intimidation
Photograph by: Paul Strand Image Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum The photograph above, titled New York (Wall Street), is one of Paul Strand’s most famous and widely produced images. Its eminence...
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The Instamatic
Kodak’s Instamatic series of cameras were simple point-and-shoot devices that became hugely popular. The first Instamatic to go on sale in 1963 was USD 16, and between then and 1970, 50 million units...
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One of the Earliest Nature Conservationists
Photograph by: Carleton E. Watkins Image Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum Over six decades prior to Ansel Adams’ first of many visits to Yosemite, that changed how people perceived nature and the...
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The Anatomy of Stillness
To keep people from moving during lengthy exposures, photographers devised a method where metal clamps would be attached to the subjects head to keep them still.
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William Thompson, a natural historian from Dorset, was the first person to make a photograph underwater. It can be argued though that his attempt wasn’t entirely successful. In February 1856, Thompson...
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The 176-Year-Old History of Food
Photograph by: William Henry Fox Talbot Image Source: Wikimedia Commons Did you know that food photography is as old as the history of the medium? Six years after the invention of the daguerreotype...
View ArticleAn Inspiring Beginning
The first underwater colour photograph was made off the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico (1926) by Dr William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin.
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