Blog — Education

With family from out of town and everyone dressed to the nines, the holidays are a great time to shoot family portraits. Photographer Tony Northrup shares his secrets for shooting the best family photos this holiday. Be sure to check out his website for even more tips and tricks on photography. northrupphotography.com  

From the classic turkey dinner on Thanksgiving to the unusual dishes that are passed down through the family that connect us with great grandparents, what we serve on the holidays reflects who we are as a culture and the cultural traditions we come from. 

Our desired to share food both physically with friends and family and virtually through social media is a tradition that goes back for millennia celebrating the importance of the harvest and the power of food to unite families, communities, and nations.

Today in 1839 Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre, a French artist and photographer, introduced the Daguerreotype, the first practicable method of obtaining permanent images with a camera.  The Daguerreotype photographic process starts with a sheet of silver-plated copper polished to a mirror finish, treated with fumes of iodine and bromine to make its surface light sensitive. exposed in a camera (for as long as fifteen minutes) and then developed over hot mercury, fixed by immersion in a solution of sodium thiosulfate and washed with distilled water. The George Eastman Museum explores the history and development of the Daguerreotype in the video below.  

From eyeglasses and telescopes to cameras and microscopes, the lens has shaped the way we see the world in every aspect of our life.

Our friends over at Filmmaker IQ take an in-depth look at the history of optics and how we went from the ancient Nimrud lens to the multi element coated lenses we use today.