Viva

7th grade

3/12/20

Have you ever wondered where your dog came from before you found it in the window of a puppy store? Well chances are they came from a puppy mill. So what is a puppy mill? Imagon metal grates stacked on top of each other for rows and rows in those grates are insane numbers of dogs with little to no food, shelter, water, or adequate care, this is a puppy mill, those dogs in the grates have no human interactions and are forced to breed over and over again. I believe people shouldn’t buy a dog from a place where you can’t verify where it is from such as puppy mills.

In places like puppy mills most dogs are mistreated. First of all, entire litters are faced with lack of food and veterinary care and suffer from exposure. If the puppies survive the nasty conditions of puppy mills, they are sent away on a dangerous journey to puppy stores, where they still don’t receive loving human contact. In addition, tiny puppies are forced away from their mothers and prepared to be sold to puppy stores. The preparation includes stuffing large numbers of puppies into crates with no food, water, shelter, or ventilation. The puppies are stuffed into disgusting, crowded kennels and sent on their way to the puppy shops. Mary-Jo Dionne, author of “Puppy Hell: The Horrors of Puppy Mills,” illustrates the scene of a puppy mill: “Picture, if you will, a warehouse. Imagine, within this warehouse, row after row and shelf after shelf of inventory stuffed into cramped, makeshirt cages. The ‘inventory’ in each box is half a dozen or more puppies, frequently hungry, sickly, and covered in the feces of the ‘inventory’ shelved above them. And above them.” This shows buying and dog from a place like this is just supporting puppy mills, not helping end them. In brief, these places clearly do mistreat their dogs which is unfair to the buyers and the dogs.

When buying a dog from these places, there is a high chance the dog was inbred or has diseases due to bad living conditions. To begin with, due to poor enforcement of laws, sick puppies continue to be sold in store fronts. Also, because of the high chance your dog was inbred, there is always the concern of bad temperament or health, and this sadly occurs quite often. For example, in an article published by PETA called “Puppy Mills: Dogs Abused for the Pet Trade,” the organization writes, “Dogs are bred for quantity, not quality, so unmonitored genetic defects and personality disorders that are passed on from generation to generation are common.” Have you ever thought about what happens to dogs that have genetic diseases or disorders? That’s right; they get killed. Although you may get a perfectly good dog, you have to think about how many dogs have been killed to get you that one good dog. Supporting places like this shows that you think of dogs as products not as living animals, just like the owners of puppy mills think.

Supporting these businesses only grows them and influences other people seeking to make a profit to do the same, at the expense of the animals. In fact, dogs are very easy to breed, and this allows people to produce a lot of puppies cheaply and make a large profit. Therefore, since this is such an easy market, it encourages people to do the same, instead of being the kind of breeder who spends the money to take good care of their dogs, which can be very costly. Regardless, I still believe people should seek to adopt puppies from rescues or shelters, because even with a high standard breeder, there’s still the chance the dog is inbred. But also, The Rolling Stone Magazine argues that online sales of puppies are “the perfect crime…Courts don’t care about out-of-state victims, and feds don’t even fine breeders, much less arrest them, for selling sick pups on bogus sites.” This shows that the courts aren’t going to do anything about it. That means we have to, and the only way to do this is to stop buying puppies from sketchy places like pet stores and websites that buy from puppy mills. Even though puppy mills can sell purebred dogs, they’re not worth it and you’re supporting bad business and showing other people they could do the same and nobody would stop them.

Even though puppy mills exist and will likely continue to exist that does not mean people should buy from them. Puppy mills are horrific places where no animal should ever have to live. Please think twice before you let yourself fall in love with that puppy in the window and help others do the same.

Olivia

13 years old 

7th Grade (Homeschooled)

Police: 

An Exploration 

Introduction

The word ‘police’ comes from the Greek word for city, polis. Over time it developed into the Latin root politia, meaning civil administration. Since then it has become the French word for regulating and controlling a community and later turned into the word we know today. Police. When we think of police, we think of men in blue uniforms, maybe with guns or even in a crisis, saving lives or other times interfering with things they shouldn’t be. We hear a lot in the news today about how police saved the day, how police risked their lives to save an individual or a group but we are also hearing about gun violence and police brutality. As I learned more and more about this topic of interest, the police, I began to wonder how actual policemen are viewing this issue, what other people in my community think and what my views should be. In this paper we are going to learn about the issue of police brutality, what actually officers think about this attention, police heroism, the history of police in America and other countries, the training of a police officer, gun violence, and many more things. I believe this issue is important to learn about because of how many strong opinions I have heard and how much our lives overlap with policing. Even in ways we don’t know about. By the time you have reached the conclusion of my paper I hope you have learned more about this topic and have developed more of an opinion. 

History 

There are two sides of the history of Police that have merged together over time to create the force we know today. One side is a story of heroism and members of colonial communities stepping up to protect each other, the other, not so much. First we are going to look into the slave trade. In the 1600’s and 1700’s the United States, specifically New England and Florida were being flooded with ships from coastal regions bringing in slaves to shackle and sell to the highest bidders. In this time there was an immediate call to the community for workers to help manage the large numbers of slaves and maintain order. A few wealthy slave owners were hiring men to ride along the farm fields and factories on horseback and make sure no slaves were running away or doing things that broke the slave holders’ rules.They were called the Partollers, or pattyrollers. At first this need started out small, just a few people up for the task, but by the late 1670’s the system had turned into one of the biggest organizations of its time in the United States. In a report published by the Medium, entitled  Slavery and the Origins of the American Police State, they called it ‘a comprehensive system of radially directed law enforcement.’  

The second branch was started by a small group of community members in a colonial village who stepped up to become a part of protecting the new country. They would patrol around neighborhoods, night and day, making sure everyone was safe and protecting each other from the threats in this new world. These two types of law enforcement brought about by new needs of a growing community combined in later years. Taking the bravery and strength from the community and the new rules and regulations to keep the community in line from the government. I suppose the history of police is complex and multifaceted. The bad side coming from slavery and ratial inequality and the good side coming from bravery and strength in numbers. A lot of people would say that there is only the bad side of it. That the negatives in the history of police outweigh the positives. But I think that that’s ignoring a powerful step in the building and the history of humanity and the United States. Others might say that we don’t need to think about the negative things, that because the members of this community stepped up and were brave that we can ignore the other half of this history. But I also think that would be neglecting an important piece of information and denying that this history is both good and bad. 

Historians and politicians divide the history of police into three eras. First, the political era. This was a time where there was controversy on the purpose of police and what their goal was. They were people to trust and people to be wary of at the same time. Next was the professional era. When police were first becoming an actual paying job and police officers were taken seriously. This time was full of invention and creativity. Based in 1920 to 1970, at the end of World War I and the beginning of a Republican leadership, police were taking on a role in American Society and protecting the community as they always did. But with the changing times and the brewing thoughts of World War II, the police were also becoming more military based. Last was the community era: when police really took it into their own hands to protect the community and people volunteered to help and risk their lives for others. Now, some people in the United States are looking forward to a fourth era. While we don’t know what this era would look like it would probably focus around some members of the community wanting the police force to change in small or major ways due to gun violence, police brutality and racial and gender inequality.  

Police Training

The training that makes a police officer differs from state to state and country to country but there is a basic process of training most officers go through. In Massachusetts the minimum age you can become a police officer is 19 but other places differ from 17 to 21. Former officer Ali Wicks-Lim, described her time at the Police Academy for me in an interview. She said that the training process known as ‘paramilitary training’ is designed to prepare you to interfere physically in a fight, how to shoot a gun and how to arrest someone in the field but also how to act in high pressure situations and emotionally charged interactions. Ali described how police officers at the Academy took the cadets neatly folded clothing and dumped it all in a pile on the ground while ordering them to do different things all at once. This exercise was to ready them for situations in the field that didn’t go their way such as an interaction with a civilian resulting in conflict or a domestic violence situation that results in confrontation. Chief Kasper of Northampton explained that the academy prepares you for a variety of things but you can never really prepare yourself for field work. 

The Weapons Police Use and Gun Violence in the United States 

Police carry an assortment of weapons including a variety of handguns, rifles, shotguns, pepper spray, tear gas, and batons on a daily basis. There is a long history of police misusing these weapons in different ways. On June 11, 2019 in Phoenix Arizona, a police officer was fired for pulling a gun out on a four year old African American girl and her parents when she took a doll form a Dollar Store accidentally. And there is a long list of dead civilians and police who have been killed from these weapons. But police also use these weapons to save lives everyday. In USA Today’s paper, they stated that “nearly 90% of police agree that mass shootings would be ‘reduced’ or ‘avoided altogether,” if everyone carried a gun. Another statistic showed that over 60% of gun owners carry them because they say needed protection. Recently a report came out by Investor’s Business Daily that said that over 11,000 lives are saved every year from guns and about a fourth of that number is saved by police with guns. Yet, still in 2017 there were over 39,773 deaths from gun violence. Police use these weapons to protect us but there are still consequences. Imagine what the police force would look like without guns.There may be a significant decrease in gun violence but what if an officer encounters someone with a gun who has reason to act violently? Northampton’s Chief of police, Jody Kasper, said that if we are trusting police officers to risk their lives for us then we must always give them the right to protect themselves as well. If we took away police officers guns we wouldn’t have the same police force but we would have much less gun violence and much less death. In England, some police do not carry guns on their person. Former officer Alli Wicks-Lim, said that her most important tool on her tool belt was her notebook. 

At all times, police officers wear a duty belt that has all their equipment and weapons including a notebook, a walkie talkie and a handgun. Police officers are required to carry a gun at all times (in the United States) as protection and a notebook to take notes at a crime scene so that the information can come completely first hand.      

Community Opinions: 

Stereotypes and Views of the Police Force

During my research I have found that several websites and sources had a strong bias on this controversial topic. Sources that tend to be pro police often gave a lower number of civilian deaths caused by officers, and sources that tended to be anti police gave higher numbers. In many cases numbers were presented with missing details and misleading information. For example, many sources just reported the number of civilians killed, whereas others gave details of the crime committed by each civilian or the circumstances surrounding the death. This presents a clearer picture especially if an officer was under threat. Here I have gathered several statistics that I find considerably trustworthy and unbiased. 

Police Officers on Duty

When we think of a police officer many people often think of the white, unsmiling men in blue uniforms with guns at their waists and an air of authoritarian aggression about them. There is also frequently an “us against them” mentality present, possibly bordered with fear or occasionally rooted in things we have heard from the current news dialog or from past experience. Questions arise when presented with this stereotype such as: “Doesn’t this field of work draw aggressive, power-hungry people?” or “Does this field of work and training force people to be like this?” The news often dictates the portrayal of the police as a group when in reality, every officer is different. Personality plays a big role in discouraging this stereotype. Many people in the police force can be stern and intimidating but a lot of people are really funny and interactive, just like it would be in a regular office building. We really need to discourage this negative stereotype if we want the police force to grow or change in any way. There are female police officers, there are African American police officers, there are LGBTQ members of our comuinity on the force. However, statistics show that only about 20% of police are female whereas about 80% of police are male. Transgender and LGBTQ members of police forces weren’t even included in most statistics. Around 75% of officers are white whereas only about 25% are black. If we want to continue to diversify our police forces, making them more representative of the communities they serve, we need to abandon these stereotypes. In order to continue to have a police force to protect us from gun violence to minor car crashes, we have to respect that they are people and they are just as different from each other as anyone else.     

Women in Law Enforcement

Over the years the population of women in law enforcement has grown substantially. Many women in law enforcement believe they must go above and beyond, presenting the stern, cold, unforgiving image to prove themselves in the field and academy. Women can be judged more critically for their physical size and strength and have to work hard to overcome historical perceptions of women as being physically weak. The reality is that women are just as capable as their male counterparts of being good police officers and bring a different and unique way of enforcing the law and holding the public accountable. Women go through the same training as men and studies show that men and women are just as capable as each other. 

African American  

Negative and incorrect stereotypes about African American people in our culture include the belief that African Americans are more likely to be poor and engage in criminal activity, and they are more likely to abuse substances and act as perpetrators of illegal gun activity. The labels given to Black people when they violate the law are often very different from the labels given to their White counterparts. For example, the media and public are very quick to point out mental illness as a contributing factor to gun violence massacres committed by White individuals, where Black individuals are usually just labeled as criminals and enemies of the public. There is also a common belief that African Americans are more responsible for the criminal activity in the US than White Americans are. In fact, according to some statistics, White people in the United States committed over 68.9% of crimes in 2017, while black people only committed 27.2%. It’s not that black people are more likely to commit crimes, but rather they are more likely to be convicted because of the stereotypes placed on black people in the United States. Other statistics show that in the U.S black people are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than white people are. 

Conclusion

The laws that govern our everyday lives are enforced by your local police force. Each police force is made up of real people who live and work in your community. Therefore, everything that happens to the police force directly impacts you and your community everyday. The issues and controversies surrounding the police are important for every citizen to pay attention to. Because so many people have started to pay attention to the police and look ahead to the fourth era of policing, there have been several major and important changes on the national and local level. For example, in 2015 the city of Northampton, Massachusetts elected its first female chief of police, Chief Kasper, and she has done an outstanding job to connect the community with police and discourage stereotypes of all kinds. Police academies strategies to combat racial inequality, police brutality and gun violence have developed and grown over the years to provide safety in the community. Support groups for police officers have grown and become a part of policing over time and are now helping the officers that risk their lives for us everyday to overcome emotional challenges. Most people don’t think about the police in their everyday lives. But, after reading this essay, wherever your bias may stand, we must keep learning and teaching others about police. Acknowledging the positive and negative aspects of policing in our country with honesty, curiosity, and an open mind will help us work towards the kind of society we want. On one hand, police officers choose to risk their lives everyday to protect us from small to big ways, from car crashes to school shootings. On another, the United States today, there are more children that die of gun violence than cancer every year. Only about 20% of officers in the US are women and just under 15% of officers are black, emphasizing the major gap in representation. Whatever your bias may be, if we want our police academy to grow and keep changing for the better, then we must educate ourselves about police.      

Glossary 

Police:

“The civil force of a national or local government, responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order.” – Dictionary 

In an interview with me, Chief Jody Kasper of Northampton stated that “The purpose of the police is to maintain order and insure people have the best quality of life they can have.” 

Police Brutality: “Police brutality is an extreme form of police violence involving physical harm or death to a person or animal. Widespread police brutality exists in many countries and territories, even those that prosecute it. Although illegal, it can be performed under the color of law.” – Wikipedia 

Guns: Police officers in the US are required to carry a gun on them at all times. Originally, this invention was used to defend yourself but over the years it has been turned into a weapon that most fear. The official definition of a gun is: “a weapon incorporating a metal tube from which bullets, shells, or other missiles are propelled by explosive force, typically making a characteristic loud, sharp noise.”  

Bias: As described earlier in this paper, a bias is a preconceived belief system or idea that is rooted in past experiences or things we have heard that help us come to a conclusion or answer when making a decision.   

Stereotype: Put simply, a stereotype is “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.” – Dictionary 

Colonial: The definition of colonial as a whole is a group of living things working together to build a community and a systematic way of life that depends on each other for food, water, shelter and many other things. But since the age of Christopher Columbus, the word colonial stands to represent the history of the US. 

Slavery: “A slave is a person owned by someone and slavery is the state of being under the control of someone where a person is forced to work for another. A slave is considered as a property of another as the one controlling them purchases them or owns them from their birth.” – US Legal Dictionary  https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/slavery/

Pattyrollers: “Slave patrols called patrollers, patterrollers, pattyrollers or paddy rollers, by the slaves, were organized groups of armed white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon black slaves in the antebellum U.S. southern states.” – Wikipedia 

Appendices: 

Appendix 1. Politics and Current Events

 In the news today we hear a lot about the police. The information sources provide differs substantially due to their bias, the date they were published, who they were sponsored by and many other factors. In this section of my paper I want to look at some examples of bias sources, politicians views on this topic, reliable resources to learn about the police from and events that are happening in the news and in our community today.

First, we are going to look into the beliefs some politicians and democratic presidential candidates running for the 2020 election may hold. In his time running for office, Cory Booker has shown that he has many ideas to combat police brutality and racial inequality in law enforcement. He believes that we must follow the data to the root of the problem and sort up from there. In a video released a few months ago, Booker said that if we do this we can “identify problems and actually help solve them.” He believes that society’s stereotypes are to blame for racial descrimination, not law enforcement as a whole. And while many police officers may hold untrue beliefs about black people and abuse their power this is the same for many other individuals in society, we should not place another incorrect and unfair stereotype on police that they are all racist. In contrast to Cory Booker, Julián Castro, another democratic candidate running for election in 2020, believes that law enforcement needs to be rethought completely. “How many of these videos do we have to watch to understand that even though we have some great police officers, this is not a case of bad apples?” He asked a few months ago, “The system is broken, so let’s fix it.” Another Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, believes that the system we have now is the best one we could ever dream of. “We can fight terror and fight violent crime at the same time, but we need to keep focused on what works,” He said in a speech he made a few years ago. “And what works in the fight against crime? It’s simple — more police on the streets.” Biden still backs these beliefs strongly. Talking to a group of officers a few years ago he said,”We are safer and more secure today than we have been in decades, thanks to your hard work and dedication.” 

There are many sources today to learn more about police, politicians, racial inequality and gun violence. It is interesting sometimes, to research topics from one point of view and then from another when finding what your opinion is. From one point the history of police stems from slavery and if that is true we can overlook other factors, like where we are today and how many lives police have saved. And from another point we can look past the fact the police have saved so many lives because of the lives we have lost, police and not, from this field of duty. Here I have collected a list of sources that have a strong bias but are extremely interesting to research. While looking into these sites pay attention to who is sponsoring them, how eager they are or aren’t to put forward their bias and the stereotypes they do or don’t play into and encourage.  

The Trace  (a very ani-police organization so make sure to keep in mind their bias), 

Fox News (an extremely right-wing organization who is very pro police) 

NPR (their bias is usually liberal and whether they are ani police or pro police differs due to circumstances) 

USA Today (another generally pro- police source, mostly right – wing, pay attention to who they quote and how eager they are to let their bias show in this paper)   

The New York Times (their bias differs from paper to paper but keep in mind they are probably more likely to release information on police brutality than others) 

Appendix 2. Interviews 

To get a better idea of what police officers today think of these issues and to learn more about police as a whole I interviewed three different kinds of police officers in my community. To put their quotes and references into context, I have created a short profile for each. 

Ali Wicks-Lim:

Ali worked as a college campus police officer. In her time there she did everything from working overnight shifts and responding to calls to organizing self defense classes and community outreach programs for the students and staff. She was also a sensitive crimes investigator which meant that if there were any incidents of a sensitive nature she would run those investigations. She has worked hard to protect the students living and learning on campus. 

Sean Norris:

Sean Norris works as an Assistant Chief Probation Officer in Dorchester Massachusetts. A probation officer is someone who works with individual offenders of the law to help prevent them from committing new crimes and to hold them accountable to their old ones. He has worked with the Probation Department for over 23 years and before that he was a social worker for nine. He believes that his job requires the skill set of both a police officer and a social worker and incorporates this belief everyday in his job. 

Jody Kasper:

Chief Kasper became the first woman chief of police of Northampton, in 2015. Since then she has worked her hardest to improve Northampton in so many ways including connecting members of the community with officers on a daily basis, discouraging stereotypes about women in law enforcement and being there for her community not only as an officer and chief but as a human and citizen herself. Being the first woman chief of police in Northampton, she has done an outstanding job, not only living up to the standards of the last chief, but going beyond them for her community and her officers.

Appendix 3. Other Points of Interest 

The KGB: Translated to English, the KGB stands for Committee for State Security. It was the main security organization for the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. But for most it didn’t provide security. For many this organization was built on fear and pain and that was the only thing they brought. They were considered a form of extreme police. Their leaders and founders were part of the Council of Ministers; Kliment Voroshilov, Nikolay Pegov , Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-10-23-9003280898-story.html

Special Police: “Special police usually describes a police force or unit within a police force whose duties and responsibilities are significantly different from other forces in the same country or from other police in the same force, although there is no consistent international definition.” – Wikipedia 

The definition of the Special Police differs from place to place. Most police forces have small groups of officers that have specific jobs they are assigned. The specific jobs range from traffic stops, security, patrolling campuses, detective work, highway patrol, fish and game wardens and many more. 

Bibliography 

Waxman, Olivia. “How the U.S. Got its Police Force.” Time Magazine, May 18th, 2017, https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

“Police Brutality in the United States.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality_in_the_United_States 

Fountain, Ben. “Slavery and the Origins of the American Police State.” The Medium, Sep 17, 2018, https://medium.com/s/story/slavery-and-the-origins-of-the-american-police-state-ec318f5ff05b

Moore, Leonard. “Police Brutality in the United States.” Britannica, July 8th, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580 

French, David. “How to Sustain a False Police Shooting Crisis.” National Review, August 26th, 2016, https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/police-shootings-media-created-fake-crisis/  

Lebron, Audrea. “Examples of Community Policing Strategies at Work.” Rave, April 10th, 2019, https://www.ravemobilesafety.com/blog/examples-of-community-policing-strategies-at-work

Schodolski, Vincent. “KGB Legacy of Abuse Faces Soviet Enquiry.” Chicago Tribune, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-10-23-9003280898-story.html

Pratt, Eric. Gin owners of America.” USA Today, Aug 5th, 2005, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/05/gun-owners-america-guns-save-lives-every-day-editorials-debates/1916643001/ 

“13 Statistics That Tell the Story of Gun Violence in 2018.” The Trace, December 25th, 2018

https://www.thetrace.org/2018/12/gun-violence-facts-statistics-2018/

Wadman, Meredith. “Guns kill more U.S. kids than cancer. This emergency physician aims to prevent those firearm deaths.” The AAAS, Dec 6th, 2018 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/guns-kill-more-us-kids-cancer-emergency-physician-aims-prevent-those-firearm-deaths

“The Washington Post Police Shooting Database.” Washington Post, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/

“Police Officers.” Data USA, https://datausa.io/profile/soc/333050/

Buchholz, Kathrina. “How Many People Are Killed by Police in the U.S.?” Statista, Nov. 1st, 2019 https://www.statista.com/chart/5211/us-citizens-killed-by-police-2016/

Chappell, Bill. “More Police Officers Died From Gunfire Than Traffic Incidents In 2018, Report Says.” NPR, December 27th, 2018 https://www.npr.org/2018/12/27/680410169/more-police-officers-died-from-gunfire-than-traffic-incidents-in-2018-report-say

this is my blog post.

By Mason

Introduction

When you think of a “camera” what image comes to mind? Most likely you are thinking of a big DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera, or maybe your point and shoot, or maybe even your smartphone camera. 

What you probably don’t think of is a film camera, or the camera obscura which was invented nearly two thousand years ago. 

Even if you are knowledgeable about the older versions of cameras, you may not be aware of the lesser-known versions that were the stepping stones of camera development between the major advancements. It is incredibly interesting to learn about how photography became what it is today. The first photographic processes used dangerous chemicals contributing to the early deaths of many photographers at that time. Then, when the glass plate process was invented, photographers had to lug around big heavy glass plates as the medium for their pictures. Even the early digital cameras had slower shutter speeds making it hard for photographers to capture movement.

Now, with the click of a button or the touch of a screen, it is possible to capture a split second, in increasingly impressive quality. In this essay I won’t just examine the workings of the modern camera, I will also look at how photography began and many of the major advancements, improvements, and changes photography went through to become the digital photography we have today. In addition, I will describe many of the photographic processes that were involved in developing pictures taken with all different methods. 

Part 1

There were a couple of major inventions that led to the invention of the first camera. The first such breakthrough was the camera obscura. The camera obscura is a small room with a small hole cut out from the wall. This creates a projection of the image of the scene outside of the room on the wall opposite the hole, only upside down. This concept was most likely known over “two thousand years ago”(Rosenblum). Its name literally translates to “Dark Room.” The camera obscura was often used by artists. They would trace the image that showed up on the wall to replicate the scene on paper. However, soon scientists started searching for a way to create the pictures entirely mechanically. In 1727, Johann Heinrich, a German professor of anatomy, discovered that “the darkening of silver salts, a phenomenon known since the 16th century and possibly earlier, was caused by light and not heat”(Rosenblum). This discovery was significant because for a camera to work there must be some kind of light-sensitive material involved so the image will be saved. These were the first two steps toward the machine that could record events in a split second but it took until the 19th century for the first camera to be invented.

In 1826 or 1827 the first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépc, an inexperienced inventor. He invented a process called heliography (sun drawing) where he used a pewter plate coated with a mixture of bitumen of Judea and water. He would then dry the plate over heat. Next, he would put the plate into a camera obscura, the room previously used by artists now downsized to a large box. It took eight hours to create this picture of a rooftop that was outside of his window. During the exposure time, the bitumen exposed to light would harden and turn a lighter shade. He would then develop the photograph by using lavender oils to wash off the bitumen that was not hardened by light. These parts were places in the image where the light was blocked out, for example by the buildings in the image. And the darker shades were represented by the metal. The result was this picture of a French rooftop taken outside of his house window.

Niépc was probably the biggest pioneer of photography because he figured out how to do it. But photography didn’t really become popular until Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who knew Niépc for part of his life, invented a new process: the Daguerreotype.

Daguerre’s method was quite similar to Niépc’s, except for a few key details. First, instead of using a pewter plate, Daguerre used a silver-coated copper plate that was shiny like a mirror after it was buffed and polished. After coating his plate with iodine and bromine, he would expose the plate in a camera obscura like Niépc. This process originally took fifteen minutes, but after some improvements to the chemicals involved, Daguerre’s process ended up taking less than a minute. This meant that people were able to get their pictures taken. Another difference was the post-production method. Daguerre used toxic chemicals like mercury to develop his pictures. Getting photographed became increasingly popular; so popular, in fact, that this period is sometimes referred to as “Daguerromania”! 

During the early 1940s, scientists came up with many improvements for the Daguerreotype process. Some of the people who came up with such advancements were József Petzval who discovered how to make a lens that was 20 times faster than the one that Daguerre used. This meant that the time needed to take the picture was greatly reduced. Voigtländer improved the design of the camera itself making it much more portable and easy to travel with. Franz Kratochwila released and made publicly available a chemical sensitization process which increased the sensitivity by five times. Such improvements made the camera more accessible and convenient for everyone to use. The photograph above  is one of Daguerre’s most famous photographs taken with his Daguerreotype. It is regarded as one of the first still-life photographs ever taken.

While Joseph Nicéphore Niépc was the first to show that photography was possible, Daguerre was the one to make it popular. The camera has gone through many major improvements over the 192 years it has been in existence. The first photographers couldn’t even carry their cameras let alone snap a picture of a fast-moving object. The next advancements in photography include faster exposure times, pictures that are more easily reproducible, and eventually digital photography.

Part 2

Previously we examined how photography began, but between when it started and the digital photography we have today, it went through countless changes. This section will explain some of the notable advancements of photographic methods. These processes include the Calotype Process, the Wet-Collodion Process, Dry Plates, Autochrome, and Kodachrome. Each unique process uses different chemicals and materials to make many distinct kinds of photographs, and each process brought something new to photography.

In 1841, right as the Daguerreotype was becoming popular, William Henry Fox Talbot discovered a new photographic method. He figured out how to use gallic acid to create light-sensitive paper. After exposing his light-sensitive paper he could rinse the latent image with hyposulphite. The result was an image on paper, slightly fuzzier than Daguerre’s images. He patented this method and called it the “Calotype” meaning “beautiful picture” in Greek.

Although the images were slightly fuzzier than previous methods, this process became very popular for one reason in particular: the images could be easily reproduced. Using previous photographic methods it was only possible to create a one time image, but with Talbot’s Calotype method, it was possible to reproduce infinite copies from one negative. The concept of being able to reproduce an image has become a core concept of photography.

Ten years later, in 1851, Frederick Scott Archer discovered a new process involving not metal or paper, but glass plates. The Wet Collodion method involved preparing a glass plate with Collodion, a solution of nitrocellulose, in a solution of alcohol and ether. After exposing it for a few seconds, it was crucial to develop it immediately afterward. The end product is a glass negative that can produce infinite copies onto paper with very good quality.

Despite having to use a portable darkroom because the plates needed to be prepared immediately before being exposed, and developed immediately afterward, the Wet Collodion method became extremely popular. Its quality was unparalleled at the time, and it was reproducible, which made it the main method for photographers.

The next photographic process put all previous methods to shame: Dry Plates. “In 1871 Richard Leach Maddox, an English physician, suggested suspending silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion, an idea that led, in 1878, to the introduction of factory-produced dry (glass) plates coated with gelatin containing silver salts.”(Rosenblum) These plates were 60 times more sensitive than Wet Plates. This meant that it was possible to take pictures without a tripod. Furthermore, several inexpensive handheld cameras were introduced. Among these was the Kodak camera which traded the glass plates for what we know today as film. Once the one films’ hundred pictures had been taken, the whole camera was sent to a Kodak factory where it was developed and then sent back to the photographer.  Photographers didn’t have to travel with a portable darkroom, which made taking pictures much more convenient. Another benefit of the Dry Plate method is that unlike previous methods it did not require noxious chemicals. As you can imagine, this camera made photography easy for everyone.

As its name suggests Dry Plates can be exposed dry and developed after the exposure. This means that Dry Plates could be mass-produced so photographers did not have to prepare the plates themselves. The Dry Plate method also offered faster exposure times. In the 1880s Eadweard Muybridge, who became famous for his study, did research on the movement of animals and humans, using the Dry Plate method. He set up a series of cameras in a line and attached the shutters to strings so that when the strings were broken the cameras would take a picture. He would release different animals through the line of cameras so that when they walked through they would break each string in quick succession. Scientists learned a lot about how different animals move from these experiments. Another famous photographer who used Dry Plates was Mathew Brady who photographed the American Civil War. The Dry Plate method revolutionized photography by offering a way that amateur photographers could practice photography without having to worry about noxious chemicals or a portable darkroom.

The next major advancement in photography took place 36 years later in France. It may have been the most exciting breakthrough yet: color. Before 1907, many photographers commissioned painters to add color to their pictures. In 1907, two brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, finally discovered how to create color photos. They figured out how to filter light through microscopic dyed potato starch to create a color image. First, the Lumière brothers would make the glass plate dye-sensitive by using a silver and gelatin emulsion. This would allow the color to stay on the plate once the photograph was taken. Then they used a filter with millions of microscopic dyed potato starch molecules spread throughout the plate. Each microscopic dot was a color: red, blue, or green. These colored dots would filter the light and create a color image. The exposure time for the autochrome process was slightly longer than previous processes, but as you can imagine, it was an immediate success. One other inevitable downside of color photography was that it was significantly more expensive than black and white.

In 1973, what is probably the world’s most famous kind of film was invented by George Eastman who founded Kodak. At the time it was made available, a roll of Kodachrome film cost about $3.50, which would be approximately $54 in today’s money. Kodachrome was a much more complicated and sophisticated process than Autochrome. The film is made up of many different layers of coatings. Essentially each layer is sensitive to one color. A blue sensitive emulsion is closest to the lens. After the blue sensitive emulsion, there is a yellow filter. Then a blue and green sensitive emulsion comes next, but because of the yellow filter, the blue and green emulsion only picks up green. The last layer is sensitive to red. Basically, the image is formed on three different layers: red, blue, and green. After the image was sent to a developing factory a very complicated process would begin. 

I will not go into detail about the post-production method of Kodachrome because it is much more complicated than previous processes. If you would like to learn about the process visit http://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-it-works-kodachrome.html website. The first step was to use Phenidone hydroquinone, a black and white developer, to develop a monochromatic image on each layer. After this many different steps followed, and eventually each layer had a developed image in one of the primary colors and since they were overlaid, it created a full spectrum of color. 

A National Geographic photographer, Steve McCurry, shot one of the world’s most famous photographs; “Afgan Girl” with Kodachrome. This picture ended up on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic Magazine. This picture has the amazing quality and incredibly vibrant colors, that Kodachrome exhibits.

If you look at how many little changes photography went through from Niépc’s method, to George Eastman’s Kodachrome it’s astonishing. In the span of 147 years, photography changed in many ways including reproducibility of photos, quality of photos, ease of use, convenience, and of course color. Next, we will examine the beginning of a new era, the digital era of photography. I will explain what digital photography is, how it works, how it’s changed, and its advantages and disadvantages.

Part 3

We have talked about many major advancements in photography, but in 1975 what is probably the biggest advancement in photography was invented: digital. It began a new era of photography. Photos no longer had to be developed, now pictures were immediately available after they were taken. Also, pictures could be easily edited without using any chemicals, filters, or other equipment. The current memory cards have significantly more memory than a roll of film and they are also conveniently more portable. It is not necessary to keep buying the film, you get a memory card and then you can use it forever. 

The digital format has revolutionized photography in many ways. As it continues to evolve, photography has achieved even quicker shutter speeds, even better quality, and even more advanced sensors, lenses, and cameras. This section will explain how digital photography works, the mechanics of it, as well as how it has evolved from the first digital camera to the cameras we have today. This section will then explore some of the instances in which digital has been useful for photography and some of the major advantages and disadvantages.

Digital is way more complicated than any of the film processes I have described so far. This is mainly because instead of an image being stored on a light-sensitive material like paper, glass, or metal, digital images are stored in the form of numbers on a memory card. There are many steps that happen between clicking a picture and the picture being stored on the memory card. Science writer and photography expert Chris Woodford explains this process succinctly:

If you’ve ever looked at a television screen close up, you will have noticed that the picture is made up of millions of tiny colored dots or squares called pixels. Laptop LCD computer screens also make up their images using pixels, although they are often much too small to see. In a television or computer screen, electronic equipment switches all these colored pixels on and off very quickly. Light from the screen travels out to your eyes and your brain is fooled into see a large, moving picture.

In a digital camera, exactly the opposite happens. Light from the thing you are photographing zooms into the camera lens. This incoming “picture” hits the image sensor chip, which breaks it up into millions of pixels. The sensor measures the color and brightness of each pixel and stores it as a number. Your digital photograph is effectively an enormously long string of numbers describing the exact details of each pixel it contains. (Woodford)

Before the light hits the sensor, the light enters the lens and passes through two filters inside your camera. For some cameras, you can buy separate external filters. First, it goes through an infrared reduction filter. Infrared light, if not filtered, can sometimes mess up a picture. Next, the light goes through a bare color filter which basically divides the sensor into tiny squares of red, green, and blue. When the light hits the sensor, it is then processed into analog electrical signals. The signals are sent to a digital-analog converter which converts the signals into numeric form: a long string of ones and zeros to be stored on the memory card.

When you edit a digital image to change the lighting, colors, size, or even elements of the image like changing the background, the editing software changes some of the numbers in some way which then manipulates the picture. For instance, imagine that you want to crop the picture. Your editing software might delete some of the numbers that the pictures are made up of to get rid of the unwanted parts of the photo. If you want to change the lighting of the photo (make it lighter or darker) the software might change all of the numbers by a certain amount.

When you look at a digital image close up, you see that it is made up of many little  single-colored squares called pixels. When you look at the whole picture, you usually can’t see the individual squares. When you buy a camera you can see how many megapixels it has. A megapixel is equal to a million pixels. The more megapixels a picture is, the less pixelated it will be. Digital photography has been around for 44 years. In those years the camera has gone from 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels) to the 50 megapixels (50,000,000 pixels) range. The newer iPhones even have around 12 megapixels (12,000,000 pixels).

Digital has overwhelmed the photographic community with advantages. But there are a few key disadvantages of digital too. First, you don’t have to put the same amount of work into each picture. This may seem like an advantage, but sometimes putting in a lot of work for one picture instead of being able to take as many as you want can make a picture feel more worthwhile. Also, film has a very unique look, especially if it’s black and white. Some people prefer the look of film to the look of digital. 

Very few people nowadays practice film photography. It has become harder and harder to find film at a reasonable price, and it’s even harder to find a place to develop it. It is almost as if film photography is a different art form from digital photography. While they have some things in common, the process of taking a picture is very different between the two. 

Now in 2019 digital photography has gone through many different changes. There are more kinds of cameras including point and shoot, DSLR, and Mirrorless. In addition, there are many different kinds of sensors, flashes, batteries, lenses and much more. Now almost everyone owns a camera whether it be their phone or a DSLR. This means that almost everyone has the power to document their experiences. With early cameras, a photographer needed a lot of equipment and skill with using chemicals this meant that there were not very many photographers. Now basically everyone is a photographer.

Conclusion

When I look back on the first cameras of 193 years ago, it’s incredible that taking a single picture took so much work. It involved leaving a camera out for around 8 hours to expose the photo and then processing it using dangerous chemicals. Even after it had been developed you would only get a black and white image, the quality of which was nothing like what we have now, and it wasn’t even reproducible. Now we can simply push a button or touch a screen and we will have an amazing colorful image that can be printed infinite times. 

Thinking about what photography once was prompted me to wonder what photography will be like in the future. I enjoy thinking about what photography will be like in 2212, 193 years from now. Will there be holographic imaging technology? Will it be possible to print photos stereoscopically? Will the camera be able to capture scents and sounds? Could the camera be connected to electric pulses in your brain to make you feel the emotions in a picture? Will there be no need for a camera at all? Could you take pictures only using technology attached to your eyes and your brain? Will the people who live in 2212 reflect in awe and pity on the photographers of 2019 and the seemingly limited camera technology available to us? Or will the human species not even exist by then so there is no point in speculating about any sort of technological advancements whatsoever? 

Glossary

Calotype an early negative-positive photographic process, patented by William Henry Talbot in 1841, in which a paper negative is produced and then used to make a positive contact print in sunlight.

Camera Obscura a darkened boxlike device in which images of external objects, received through an aperture, as with a convex lens, are exhibited in their natural colors on a surface arranged to receive them: used for sketching, exhibition purposes, etc.

Daguerreotype an obsolete photographic process, invented in 1839, in which a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was developed by exposure to mercury vapor.

Develop to undergo developing, as a photographic film.

Digital representing or operating on data or information in numerical form. A digital clock uses a series of changing digits to represent time at discrete intervals, for example, every second. Modern computers rely on digital processing techniques, in which both data and the instructions for manipulating data are represented as binary numbers.

Dry Plates a glass photographic plate coated with a sensitive emulsion of silver bromide and silver iodide in gelatin.

Film a cellulose nitrate or cellulose acetate composition made in thin sheets or strips and coated with a sensitive emulsion for taking photographs.

Heliograph an early type of photoengraving made on a metal plate coated with sensitized asphalt.

Kodachrome a brand of positive color transparency.

Megapixel a unit equal to one million pixels, used to measure the resolution of a digital image.

Memory Card a very small, portable electronic device for flash-memory data storage, as in a digital camera, cell phone, or digital media player.

“Dictionary.com.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/.

Pixel the smallest element of an image that can be individually processed in a video display system.

Silver Salts a light-sensitive chemical compound.

Stereoscopic noting or pertaining to three-dimensional vision or any of various processes and devices for giving the illusion of depth from two-dimensional images or reproductions, as of a photograph or motion picture.

Wet Plates the collodion photographic process

“Dictionary.com.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/.

Bibliography

Helmut Gernsheim. “Aa 052 The History Of Photography : Helmut Gernsheim : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/aa052-TheHistoryOfPhotography/page/n15.

Andrews, Evan. “8 Crucial Innovations in the Invention of Photography.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Apr. 2015, https://www.history.com/news/8-crucial-innovations-in-the-invention-of-photography.

“Dictionary.com.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/.

Rosenblum, Naomi, et al. “History of Photography.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography.

“The History of Photography.” Nicephore Niepce House Photo Museum, http://www.photo-museum.org/photography-history/.

Wendt, Karl. “What Is inside a Digital Camera? (1 of 2).” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering/reverse-engin/digital-camera/v/what-is-inside-a-digital-camera-1-of-2-1.

Woodford, Chris. “How Do Digital Cameras Work?” Explain That Stuff, 29 Sept. 2018, https://www.explainthatstuff.com/digitalcameras.html.