photography is capable of capturing the world as we see it. Unlike the artist who sees and interprets the captive world, photography offers a vision that everyone sees and understands. Unlike painting, however, photography is a relatively new invention. Although photography has come a long way in two hundred years, remnants of the old technique remain. One example is the constant use of sepia tones by many people today.
French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, trying to find improvements to a new printing technique called lithography, discovered that he could create engravings on glass and pewter plates using a chemical called bitumen. He then shared his findings with an artist named Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Daguerre, two years after Niépce’s death, would find a new way to create images. This new process problem solving obscures images over time. This new process is called the daguerreotype.
Soon photography took over the world and now it is common for every household to have some kind of camera. Now as a color photography, it is still important to see us in black and white tones or even in sepia. Black and white images give romantic images, but sepia tones give a softer appearance than grays. Some viewers feel that sepia images feel more alive and sometimes elegant, often challenging images of a bygone era that still captures our imaginations, an age that was more simple and focused on finding beauty in everything.
Sepia is really brown, but it can also be combined with a yellow or red tint. Over time as the photo fades, the sepia color floats the image. These recent images appeared in strong brown shades but over time, depending on what they were exposed to, would develop either “yellow” or stronger red tones. First, cuttlefish ink extracted from cuttlefish was used to develop images. In order to physically create a sepia toned photograph, the photographer would develop the print as he normally would on the then bleached paper, remove the silver from it and soak the print in a sepia bath.
With digital photography there are many image editing programs that create a sepia look with the click of a button. Comments from those who enjoy sepia toned photographs explain how the tone “lightens the mood of the image rather than a specific point of the image”. Today it is so used to see photography in these sepia tones when it is like a fresh breath air. It is all a novelty in that we live in the age of color photography, which is why it continues to be used long after its usefulness (i.e. helping in the film development) penetrated
