The Introduction Of Portrait Photography

Portrait photography is the photo capture of an individual or group of people with the primary goal of displaying the likeness, mood and personality of the individuals or individual. Most portraits are not created for public display and depict common persons instead of professional models. Portraits are typical possessions of families these days.

Portraits usually focus on the face of the individual although the entire body or background is sometimes included. The portrayed commonly looks directly at the camera but some portraits have them looking off to the side or feature two persons taking a look at each other instead of the camera. Portraits regularly honor special events like graduations and weddings and many houses have professional family portraits hanging on their walls too. So, when and where did portrait photography actually originate?

The Advancement and Popularization of Portrait Photography

Portrait photography first gained its recognition in the middle of the 1800s with the innovation of the daguerreotype, developed by Louis Daguerre. Although it was not the first photographic process developed, it needed much shorter exposure times compared to previously available processes.

This made the daguerreotype the first commercially practical process with the opportunity to permanently record and fix an image with an exposure time well-suited for portrait photography. By 1840 daguerreotype studios would be found around Europe and the United States, bringing portrait photography to an astonished middle class. Many of these studios produced over 500 portrait plates each day.

Sadly, the daguerreotype was not capable of copying because it was a direct photographic process where the image was directly exposed onto a mirror-polished surface. Further advancements in portrait photography took place in 1851, when Fredrick Scott Archer developed the collodion or wet-plate process. The collodion produced sharper photos since the negatives were made of smooth glass that was more durable in comparison with paper. This allowed for a lot more paper prints to be produced from one negative.

In 1854, the United States was coming to the ambrotype, a glass negative that was backed with black material enabling this to be viewed as a positive. The ambrotype was offered to the same portrait studios that used the daduerreptype, but at a lower cost. Two years later, the tintype was patented which utilized iron plates rather than glass.

It was a lot inexpensive compared to ambrotype and soon became the most readily available form is used for location portrait photography. Tintype portrait photographers mainly photographed Union solders and pioneer families, commonly working from the back of horse-drawn wagons. Modern portrait photography owes all to the inventors and beginning photographers who started all of it.

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