historical

This 1939 Cutaway Diagram Shows the Anatomy of a Leica Camera

When the Leica camera was born in the early 1900s, it was the first practical 35mm camera to use standard 35mm cinema film. In 1930, Leica introduced the Leica I Schraubgewinde, which used an interchangeable lens system based on the Leica LTM (Leica Thread Mount) 39mm screw thread.

Want a peek of the inner workings of Leica's early LTM camera? Today's your lucky day.

Photos of Photographers in the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, the US government launched the largest photography project it ever sponsored by sending photographers across the country to document America. Of the 170,000 photos captured by photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein, some of them showed other photographers at work with their cameras.

We've gathered together a collection of photos showing photographers during the Great Depression (and the few years following it) between 1935 and 1946.

This Priceless Paper Described Photography Before It Was a Thing

Here's a video you need to watch if you enjoy seeing and learning about photography history. The folks over at Objectivity recently paid a visit to The Royal Society, where they were shown a set of priceless items from photography history.

In addition to a set of super expensive early photos from the 1850s, they were also shown one of the earliest descriptions of photography: a 1839 paper by William Henry Fox Talbot titled: "Some Account on the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or: the Process By Which Natural Objects May Be Made to Deliniate Themselves Without the Aid of the Artist's Pencil."

8 Classic Viewfinder Designs in Vintage Cameras

What’s in a viewfinder? The view within a viewfinder has always been an opportunity to display additional information to the user. In this post, we'll take a quick look at 8 film SLR and rangefinder camera viewfinders.

Photos of 1930s New York City by Berenice Abbott

The Federal Art Project was a Depression-era program that launched in 1935 to fund projects by visual artists in the US. That same year, American photographer Berenice Abbott received funding for a "Changing New York" photo project to document New York City.

She shot 305 photos for the project between 1935 and 1939, and her work was published in a photo book and distributed to public institutions in New York.

The Evolution of Cameras Explained in 11 Portraits

Want to see how the look of portraits have evolved with major camera developments throughout history? Photographer Leo Rosas Morin of COOPH shot 11 portraits of 1 model, and using Photoshop, he recreated the aesthetics of 11 key moments in photography history.

These Color Photos of Paris Were Shot 100 Years Ago

Back in 1909, a super-rich French banker named Albert Kahn decided to create a photographic record of the world using the new color photography process that had just appeared, the Autochrome Lumière. He commissioned 4 photographers to take their cameras to places all over the world. One of the cities they documented was Paris.

Restoring the Photos of Charles Conlon, A Pioneer of Baseball Photography

Charles M. Conlon was an early 20th century American photographer who was among the first to regularly photograph baseball games and players. Although he shot many iconic early photos of the sport, his name was largely unknown until 1990, when 8,000+ of his negatives were found in the archives of Sporting News.

Many of the photos were heavily marked, and the Digital Archive Project at the National Baseball Hall of Fame has been working to restore those images for future generations.

‘World of Photography’ TV Show From 30 Years Ago is Now on YouTube

Between 1985 and 1991, ABC, A&E, and The Travel Channel aired a weekly half-hour TV show for photographers titled "World of Photography." The show was a big influence on a generation of photographers, exposing them to new photographers and photography techniques.

If you were a fan of the show back then, there's some great news for you now: hundreds of segments from the show can now be found on YouTube.

The Power of a Picture: A Look at ‘Young Farmers’ by August Sander

John Green of vlogbrothers made this interesting 2-minute video in which he talks about his favorite photo: a picture titled "Young Farmers" by German photographer August Sander. Upon first glance, it may look like a simple snapshot of three nicely dressed men walking along a road, but there's so much you can learn about the photo by examining it closely and by looking at the cultural context.

Ansel Adams’ Pictures of an American Relocation Camp During WWII

Ansel Adams is best known for his breathtaking landscape photos, but he photographed much more than nature during his decades-long career. In 1943, already the best-known American photographer, Adams visited the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, one of the relocation camps the US gathered Japanese-Americans into during World War II.

Portraits of Immigrants Arriving in the United States in the Early 1900s

Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, with millions of immigrants arrived in the United States via the island by boat.

Amateur photographer Augustus Sherman was the Ellis Island Chief Registry Clerk for a number of years in the early 1900s, and he used his special access to shoot portraits of many of the immigrants who passed through the station.

This 1902 ‘Photo’ of General Grant is an Early Example of Compositing

Want to see a super early example of a photo being faked through compositing? Look no further than this circa 1902 photo, titled "General Grant at City Point." It appears to show General Ulysses S. Grant posing on a horse with a large number of soldiers in the background, but it's actually the combination of three different photos.

This Bob Dylan Album Photo Was Blurry Because the Photographer was Cold

In 1966, Bob Dylan released his 7th studio album, titled "Blonde on Blonde," which went double-platinum and contained some of Dylan's best-known songs. It's also known for it's unusual cover photo. It's a blurry portrait of Dylan, created by photographer Jerry Schatzberg in New York City's meat-packing district.

The blur was the result of camera shake and, despite what many people think, was unintentional -- the photo is blurry simply because Schatzberg was cold and shivering.

Why Old Sports Photos Often Have a Blue Haze

Rich Clarkson’s photo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then named Lew Alcindor, in the 1968 NCAA Men’s National Basketball Final Four semifinal game in Los Angeles is a masterpiece of composition, timing and exposure. The square format is the result of shooting the game action with a Hasselblad – a practice that continued into the early 2000s. But that isn’t what makes this photo historically interesting.

These 1800s Cartoons Poked Fun at Photography

Poet Edgar Allan Poe had glowing things to say about photography after it exploded onto the scene in the mid-1800s. Other commentators in those days weren't so kind.

There are quite a few cartoons from the 1800s that show a more pessimistic view of photography and its emergence in the world.

Here’s What Edgar Allan Poe Wrote About the Birth of Photography in 1840

Did you know that when the daguerreotype was announced back in 1839, one of the people who wrote about the new groundbreaking technology was the famous poet Edgar Allan Poe?

After the world's first publicly announced photographic process was unveiled in January 1839, Poe wrote an article for the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly Messenger in January 1840 titled, "The Daguerreotype." In the piece, Poe called the invention "perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science."

How Color Film was Originally Biased Toward White People

Vox has published a short 5-minute video that tells the story of how early film stocks in photography were designed with light skin as the ideal skin standard, and therefore sometimes had problems rendering darker skins -- especially in photos that showed both darker and lighter complexions.

This is a Stereograph Photo Viewer from 1896

Australian toy photographer Ray of ToyShoots recently purchased this old school stereoscope that was apparently manufactured in 1896. It's the device people used to view stereoscopic photos as one 3D image (the View-Master, which was released in 1936, is also a stereoscope).

This is a Rooftopping Photographer From the 1920s

Rooftopping photographers have gotten a lot of attention and notoriety in recent days for climbing to extremely high points in cities and shooting photos while often teetering on the edge. It turns out photographers were already pulling similar stunts nearly a century ago.

The picture above (by an unknown photographer) shows a photographer taking a picture of New York City streets while standing high above on the corner of a skyscraper. It was taken sometime in the mid-1920s.

This is How Press Photos Were Transmitted Back in the 1970s

In our world of digital photography and high speed Internet, photojournalists can quickly and easily send large numbers of high-res photos to the other side of the globe. Things weren't always so convenient.

The video above shows what a photo transmitter looked like back in the 1970s. What you see is a United Press International UPI Model 16-S, which scanned photos and then transmitted them using a telephone line.

Back in 1995, A 1MP Pro Digital Camera Cost $20,000

Want to see how far digital cameras have come over just the past 20 years? Check out this 4-minute clip that CNET released back in 1995, when digital cameras were only just starting to find their way into the hands of serious photographers.

1970s Olympus Trip 35 Commercials Starring British Photographer David Bailey

Back in the 1970s, Olympus launched an advertising campaign for its Trip 35 35mm compact camera that featured renowned British photographer David Bailey. The 46-second commercial above is one of the ads that was aired: it depicted the popular racing driver James Hunt being confused for Bailey because of the Trip 35 he was shooting with.

Jules Decrauzat: The First Swiss Sports Photographer

1,250 glass negatives from between 1910 and 1925 were recently found in the archives of the Swiss photo agency Keystone. After some thorough research work, it was concluded that the photos formed an important chapter of Swiss photographic history: they were shot by photographer Jules Decrauzat, widely considered now to be the first sports photographer and first major photojournalist in the history of Switzerland.

Photographer Reshoots Some of the Oldest Surviving Photos of New York

For the past two years, photographer Jordan Liles has been researching the life and work of George Bradford Brainerd, a lesser-known 19th-century photographer who shot 2,500 photos of New York before he died in 1887 at the age of 42.

Starting in 2013, Liles has also been visiting the locations of Brainerd's photos -- some of the oldest surviving images of New York -- recreating the shots to show how New York has changed over the past 140 years.