In early process, humans eyes evolved from mere sensors, called “eyespots”, on unicellular organisms (Land & Fernald, 1992). Eyespots could only sense the brightness at the beginning, and after years of evolution the “sensor” upgraded to distinguish the shape, the color, and then the shades and all the details of the objects in the world and since then humans no longer lived in darkness and blur. With the vision sufficient to sense the environment, we gradually realize how indispensible our vision is as one of the most important senses. It took the nature years to evolve pure sensor to today’s human eyes, and later, it took humans two hundred years to develop the lenses.
In 19th century, Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce made the first photo in the world (Hirsch, 1999). Despite the success in generating a photo, the eight-hour exposure and blurry image remained as flaws of the technology. Around ten years later, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the first camera which can be carried . In the next five decades, the first colored photo, first film were invented and put into use. The first polaroid was released in 1948 by Polaroid, and 27 years later, Kodak launched the first digital camera. From then on, in addition to printing, telegraph, and recorder, human history can be marked down by photos. The invention and later breakthrough of photograph collects abundant information for humans and explore the unknown and known as humans’ eyes. The further humans can see, the more we know and the more we are able to clarify our guess and speculation.
Photos taken by journalists become an evidence and agent of a certain truth. Journalism photographer, in the last decades, has been making great effort to reveal the truth — the real scene, to convey a sense of presence to the audience. From battlefield to natural scenes, this sense of presence can be transmitted via films or pixels. More than the presence, the emotional shock conveyed from photos (911 photographer who died in the building crash after the accident). Photography highly increases the speed of message transmission and the reliability of information. Especially war photography which bring emotional shock by reappearing the cruel situation on the battlefield. With the assistance of these lenses and photos, humans are able to see the sophistication of the world where they live.
People nowadays don’t have to rush to front-end in order to capture topical photos but using smartphones to snapshot the impressive scene they witness. With the assistance of social media, they can upload their captures anytime and anywhere to let their voices be heard and pictures be seen (Hauben, 1994). The phone photography promotes the occurrence of citizen journalism, which helps spread messages and provoke movements at a faster rate.
But the more progress we have only make us more voracious. In the recent iPhone release conference, Tim Cook mentioned the high-end camera when introducing the new iPhone’s features. So why today we are so desperately asking for more crude and powerful camera equipped on our smartphone? From smartphones to gopro, compact camera to drones, cameras are no longer simply a tool of capturing the moments of our life, but capturing the moments of the history.
People want real and impressive photos to be made and seen, no matter it is true or not. They want to sense the light, which can be human-made or generated by nature, the light connects to human’s emotion and generate either happiness or pain. As what has happened in the last thousands of years, we can predict that in future, maybe ten years, or twenty years later, scientists and engineers are able to create more advanced and high-end cameras, which produce more vivid and interactive images.
By Xinyi Tan, Student from Boston University’s Emerging Media Studies program.
Reference
M F Land; R D Fernald (1992). “The Evolution of Eyes”. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 15: 1–29. doi:10.1146/annurev.ne.15.030192.000245. PMID 1575438.
Hirsch, Robert (1999). Seizing the light: a history of photography. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-697-14361-7.
Hauben, M. (1994). [online] Ais.org. Available at: http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/
Amateur_Computerist/What_the_Net_Means_to_Me.txt.
Papandrea, Mary-Rose. “Citizen Journalism and the Reporter’s Privilege.” Boston College Law School(Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 91). 2007. Retrieved January 7, 2007.