Sports Photography and Its Evolution

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Brief History of Photography
Monochrome Images
Color
Infrared and Ultraviolet Photography in Full Spectrum
Digital Photography
Photographic Prints
The Sport Photographer
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Sports photography development is related to popularity gaining sports trends, throughout the history of humanity. Photography technology from the 1800s onward aided the media and journalism in sports. Ancient sculpture works of Greek masters depict the inspiration of sports and athletics in the arts. In today’s modern sporting centers, these expressions were not common until dry plate photographic processes and wet-collodion were invented (Lattes 3). Glass plate posed photo images were allowed by these processes, even though they were not fast for stop-action images as it is seen today. The technology was yet to be considered in the field (Lattes 9). All this changed as sport and photo journals advanced during the later days of the century. At the emergence of sports journals around 1900, interest in sports images was heightened by the public. In sports photography history, there was a focus on the elite by the early contributors. Towards the last days of world war one, sport journal readers’ interest grew in professional athletes of tennis and baseball (Alvin 12). The first pictures taken were the pictures of celebrity athletes, who were in the mode of playing or inaction. The players of baseball posed with bats, and lines were formed for shots to be taken in groups. Not widely seen still were action shots. In the 1930s, appearing in magazines were action shots images of athletes.

Brief History of Photography

According to Samson, the early paintings attest to the fact that man has always wanted to record himself, his activities and the environment around him (Dugan 35). The art of sports photography in the past was practiced by the photographers who were very talented at the craft, until presently that every photographer seems to be given it a try. Great Painters all over the years have left pictures that tell the stories of the old, to the present day (Dugan 9).

Photography came about as result of the combination of discoveries by different people technically. Before the making of the first photographs, Mo Ti, a Chinese philosopher, in the 5th century described the pinhole. The discovery of Silver nitrate was made by a great scientist by name of Albertus Magnus and silver chloride was discovered by his counterpart Georges Fabricius. The diaphragm was described in 1558 by Daniel Barbaro. In 1694 the darkening of chemicals by light was described by Wilhelm Homberg. The publication of Giphanti, in 1760, a fiction book by a French author, described what can be said to be photography. With the improvements in chemical photography, it can be said that what is today described as photography dates back to 1820s (Fink 5). In 1825, an image which can be described as the first Photography was produced by Nicephore Niepce, who was a French inventor. However it took a very long time for the pictures taken by him to expose, due to this fact he started the search for a new method. In an experiment performed by Nicephore and Louis Daguerre, use was made of chemical silver compounds, this experiment was centered on Johann Heinrich Schultz’s 1724 findings, that in the presence of light chalk and silver will be darkened. The death of Niepce was announced in 1833, but the experiment was still been performed by Daguerre and he succeeded in the development of the daguerreotype finally in 1837. The first picture of a human being was taken in 1839. This was when he was taking the daguerreotype of a street in Paris. A fee was to be paid to Daguerre for his discovery by the French Government, there was an agreement that he will announce to the world that his discovery was a French gift to the whole of the universe, this was done by him in 1839. A similar process meanwhile was created by Hercules Florence in 1832, and he was named photographer (Tomlinson 6). William Fox made a discovery that he hid from the public eye. After he read about the Daguerre’s discovery, he changed virtually everything about the processes he used initially; at this point he decided to make his discovery public. Talbot made the invention of the calotype in 1840 which could produce negative images. A lot of amendments and contributions were added to the process by John Herschel. The cyanotype invention which was improved by him is presently called blueprint (Lattes 11). The words positive and negative as it is popularly used in photography today were first put to use by John. In 1819, John discovered a new solution which he called sodium thiosulphate; this was meant to be used as a solvent for silver halides. John told Daguerre and Talbot of the discovery in 1839, that pictures can be fixed by it and made permanent. In late 1939, the first glass negative was made.

Monochrome Images

The decades that came after brought the wide availability of colored films, however edgy-looking black-white images were continually preferred by the proficient sports photographers (Joshua 8). It is significant to point out that only a number of de-saturated pictures always remained totally black and white. These also contained additional hues which were dependent on the process followed. Images that were blue mixed with white were produced by the process of Cyanotype. Images in black or white are still in production by a good number of sports photographers (Woma 15).

Color

Sports photography was first printed in color in first segment of the 1800s. The first photograph that could last for a while without fading was taken by a physicist in the 1861; he was by James Clerk Maxwell. (Joshua 61) Prokudin-Gorskii in the year 1915 took some of the earlier photographs that were in color. In the early methods, three cameras were used in snapping color photos during sporting events. Attached to the camera lens was a color filter that was directly in front. Using this method, color pictures were recreated using three channels in a dark room. Very limited response in color in early films held back a technique that was practically applicable. In 1907, Autochrome, the first plate in color, used by Lumiere brothers in France, found its way to the market. An integrated tri-pack, the firm modern color film, was invented by Kodak in the America by Jan Szczepanik, a Polish constructor. The film relied on emulsions of three colors and was Kodachrome. In 1936, the invention Agfacolour Neue by Agfa followed (Woma 13). The Agfacolour Neune color couplers were integral by means of the emulsion layers, which were absent in the tri-pack process of Kodachrome. A majority of recent color films are a follow-up of the technology of Agfacolour Neue, with the exception of Kodachrome (Tomlinson 12). In 1963, Polaroid introduced a color film with an instant effect. Color photography Images could be transparent, and used as color negatives for enlargement on coated photo paper. A lot of films when, non-digitalized, come in the later form due to the availability of mechanizing equipment for printing of photographs.

Infrared and Ultraviolet Photography in Full Spectrum

Infrared and Ultraviolet films have been in use in variety for as long as the 1960s. Fresh directions in sports photography have been opened with new technological innovations in digital photography enabled by full spectrum; Cameras that are modified digitally are built to detect ultraviolet light. Most imagining sensors that are digital are sensitive for the length of 350nm and 1000nm (Dugan 11). Replacing the infrared the light of the wider field is been sensed by the camera at a higher sensitivity. Photography in full-spectrum has uses in various fields which include geology, art photography, and ghost hunting among others.

Digital Photography

In the early days of photography, commercial sports photographers were stopped from effective operation while shooting, there was as a result of the difficulty in quick assessment of the laboratories for film processing. In addition to this was the rivalry they experienced from televisions putting pressure on snappers to quickly get results to news papers. News and sports photographers, in locations that are isolated, most of the time carried along with them small photo labs. In 1981 the need for the use of film came to an end, this was as a result of the camera introduced by Sony, which had an imaging device that was charged coupled. It was named the Sony Mavica, and it was the first of its kind in the industry. The images shown on the television were saved on the disk by the Mavica, cameras that were made as of this time were not digitalized or better say were not completely digitalized. Brooke in his article on the history of digital photography stated that;

“Unlike traditional cameras that use film to capture and store an image, digital cameras use a solid-state device called an image sensor. These fingernail-sized silicon chips contain millions of photosensitive diodes called photosites. In the brief flickering instant that the shutter is open, each photosite records the intensity or brightness of the light that falls on it by accumulating a charge; the more light, the higher the charge. The brightness recorded by each photosite is then stored as a set of numbers that can then be used to set the color and brightness of dots on the screen or ink on the printed page to reconstruct the image” (Brooke 3).

Because of the high cost of the Mavica it was used basically in photojournalism, sports photography and the likes (Asha 50). While imaging digitally can be highly manipulative, this manipulation permits at different levels potentials and applications that are communicative. They have outsold film cameras; today they have new features which include audio and video recording. Back in January 2004, Kodac reviewed that it will no longer market cameras that are 35mm reloadable in Canada, Western Europe and the United State.

Photographic Prints

Traditionally, pictures were printed using rag papers, this rag papers were linen in nature, and were also used as a support for the prints. When properly processed printing on fiber-based paper can be very stable. These are a result of the coating of the papers with an emulsion. The emulsion normally used is gelatin. And to maintain or enhance this stability that has been achieved, the product of the print is further treated with selenium. If the print is stored in a poor environment cracking tends to occur. The cracking that occurs is a result of the drying of the paper. The image on the print can also be lost; this loss can be a result of high humidity. One of the greatest causes of this loss of image is photographic fixer leftovers in the form of chemicals. If contaminants are found in the water that is been used for the print processing, the end product will be affected. It is very important to wash the print so that the fixer will be totally eradicated from the print, this is because if any fixer trace has left the print will lose the image. After the fixer, which was also called hypo the discovery that was made in the papers used in printing photographs was resin coating. Another name for resin coating is water-resistant paper. The ideal that was used here was to employ the use of linen paper that was fiber-based, and then use a plastic material in coating it. This made the final product water-resistant. The disadvantage of this method is that the final image is resident on the plastic coat. And it has been observed that after some time pictures printed using this method tend to fade.

The Sport Photographer

The sports photographer came as a result of the sports magazines, the sports photographer as a new breed professional, did his job in a documentary mode. But he made use of faster, new lightweight cameras with the ability of movement seizing in the field. An example of a popular model was Nettel, a sports camera as it was advertised. It was introduced with special viewfinders equipment, which was named the sports finder, its shutter speed was 1/1,000s. Even though today it is hardly known. The first sports photographers include Neudin, E. Hahn, Albert Meyer in Germany, Laking, Beken, McNeil, and Jean and Georges in Delton, etc (Alvin 23).

The pioneer photographers in sports made use of artistic innovations of the 1880s in sports reporting. In addition to instantaneity, the distorted form potential, was made use of by the pioneer photographers, this was a poetic symbol. As stated by Muybridge, the sports photographer should be seen as the direct legacy of the scientific studies of motion, but adapted to satisfy the capricious desire of an expanding mass readership (Dugan 17). This was adopted by photographers in other fields.

Austen in USA, and Lartigue in France, were the most famous in the thousand of others all over the world. Amateur sports and photography were most of a time conflated, and the amateur photographers were described as a type of amateur sportsmen (Asha 23). The movement of the amateurs into photography, had counterparts who were in contemporary sports movements. Olympic Games reinstitution in 1896, by Baron Pierre de Coubertin was its expression in fullest. Photography and sports link were notable in activities that were travel-based like motoring, hiking, and bicycling. In their method of depicting movement, amateur photographers were expressing modernity on another side.

Conclusion

Developments in technology that are technical, the illustrated press expansion, and the mass sports proliferation in the 19th and 20th centuries, led to the emergence of sports photography. The term refers to organized photographic coverage of sporting events; aim at the distribution for the mass media. Sports are not a new theme in the arts. In the sports photography history, there was a focus on the elite by the early contributors. When photography was newly started, people that photographed sports events commercially were blocked from effectual process while shooting, this was because there was difficulty in fast assessment of the laboratories used for film processing.

Works Cited

Alvin, Daniel. The Basics of Photography, Dublin: Nati, 2000.

Asha, Grace. Photography, Cairo: Wadas, 2004.

Brooke, Bob.” The Brief History of Digital Photography”, 2008. Web.

Dugan, Edward. This Sporting Life, Nairobi: Dolphine, 2002.

Fink, Lan. Boxing and Sports today, Lagos: Aboking, 1997.

Joshua, Hane. Photography and Tourism, Kaduna: Tedy, 1995.

Lattes, John. Sportphotographie, Abuja: Dekina, 1998.

Tomlinson, Ruth. Sports and Photography, Cape Town: Alpha, 2002.

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