THE RISE OF BLACK AND WHITE AND COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

After the turn of the twentieth century, photography became a popular pastime and grew steadily. George Eastman founded the new age of photography with black-and-white snapshots. Brownie box cameras were easy to use and cheap to buy, and they were the beginning of a new way for people to try their hand at taking photographs. In 1900, a quarter of a million Kodak Brownie cameras sold for one dollar each. 

With simple cameras in the hands of more people, photography studios and traveling photographers faced stiff competition. Eventually, traveling photographers fell out of favor. However, photography studios gained popularity; today, they are big business. 

Autochrome photographs were taken from 1904 to the late 1930s. They are identified by their shades of gray and sepia tones. They may appear faded and have hard-to-identify backgrounds and details. Use care when handling these old photos, as they are incredibly fragile. 

During the early years, color photography remained a commercial undertaking for trained photographers only. Color paper prints were produced from 1941 to the present. The Kodak Company introduced Kodachrome 16mm movie film in 1935, and negative film became available from Kodak in 1941. Eventually, Polaroids became popular due to the ability to snap a photo and wait while it developed inside the camera. 

From 1948 to about 1965, many early cameras used roll film. Different types of film produce photos of various sizes. Many of those types of films were discontinued in the last few years. 

As the years passed and we entered the twenty-first century, photography became a popular and unique hobby and a profitable business. Digital photography is one of the most-loved ways to take family photographs. 

Today’s cameras are high-tech devices offering multiple advanced features that guarantee amateurs a perfect photograph. Photographers can do it all: preview the shots as they go and discard the bad ones, shoot an endless number of pictures, save and store them on small SD cards, upload them to computers, and print their prized possessions.  

The old black-and-white and color photographs are usually the basis of family photograph collections. They certainly are in my collections. Since these prints often fade in time, the best way to preserve them before they disappear is to scan all your photographs to media storage and keep the originals in a dark, low-humidity environment. 

  Photo storage includes websites where you can upload all your photographs and retrieve copies of them whenever you need to do so. The Cloud is a popular online storage system today. There are also multiple websites to help you create photo books. You upload your photos to the website, and they create beautiful photo albums for you that are mailed to your home. 

Family researchers often digitize their photographs and share them with family members on media such as CDs, flash drives, and camera cards. This is the new era of photography, and it will only get better as time goes by. 

All family photograph collections have torn, faded, cracked, and worn pictures. Besides taking your photos to a specialist who can restore them to their original likeness, you can purchase computer software to help you do it yourself. Adobe Photoshop Elements is one of them. Other programs are available as downloads, which you can install yourself. Do your research and talk with people who own such software before you make your decision. They can be pricey.

The old black-and-white and color photographs are the bulk of my family photograph collection. They are dear to my heart. In most of them, I can identify everyone in the picture, and due to the date given on the picture, I have a possibility of when it was taken. However, beware of using the date stamped at the bottom or side of the photograph to date the time the picture was taken because people waited, sometimes for years, before they took their film rolls in to be developed! 

This is the end of the photography blog series. There is much information about photography on the Internet, and remember to check out the books dedicated to learning photography!