Assignment # 1: The role of portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today

 What are the main differences and similarities between portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today?

  

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some
works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others
quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the
doing something else." - Leonardo da Vinci

Although I have started comparing painting and not portraits, I just wanted to outline the difference of pictures  in the past and today. Notice how Mona Lisa took her posture so serious, and Bre on the side is just relaxed and taking a photo for maybe a cover of a magazine. The background of the Mona Lisa seems to ‘fade’ or become more blurred and out of focus the further from the subject it extend, where as Bre's background has been obviously edited and as we all know she is not in the country she is portraying. 

Growing up as a child I never really grew up with television, so the only thing I knew were books, radios and newspapers. I remember cutting out the pictures from the newspapers and making my scrap books from the notebooks I was suppose to use for school . In my early years growing up I always enjoyed looking at  this band called 'Original Concept' I always looked at their photos from the magazine stands. Today when I look at my favorite bank Day 26 , I see so many differences yet so many similarities. Firstly in the earlier days most photos were black and white as the first set of telelvsions. Portraits of people were not as clear as the photos today. They are clearer today and has better quality with all the new camera's that are being invented.

2. Who was the photographer and who was the subject of photographs in the past and today?

In the earlier days anyone didn't just take a picture and call themselves a photographer. People had to be trained to take pictures, especially pictures that were to be published. Most of them were painters, some were even artist. Their subjects were mainly  people or a person, not to mention, self-portraits were very popular back in the days. Today, the subject varies from people to places, to animals to tiny creatures such as bugs and tiny objects such as leaves (just like the photo of the 3 leave, taken by one of my closest friends) and the list goes on.


  What was the impact of technology on the portraits in the past and today?
 Technology has had a great impact on portraits in the past and today. You are now allowed to edit, photoshop and even crop other objects onto someone else`s body. Personally, I think that technology has definitely took originality away from portraits that were from the earlier days.
For instance this picture has now been edited so many times , if you were to search this image up you would be able to find about 4 or 5 pictures that has been redone and discriminated from this original picture.

Technology has helped photography in so many ways. Technology has allowed for cameras to be produced cheaper. Nowadays, anyone who has a camera can take a portrait of whomever or whatever they want. Technology has also improved on the quality of the portraits. In the past, pictures were black and white and the coloured portraits were only hand-painted. Nowadays, pictures can be printed both in black and white and coloured. Technology has also found a way to save time both in taking and printing pictures. In the past, it takes so long to develop a picture while today, pictures can be easily printed.

 

Every body in light and shade fills the
surrounding air with infinite images of
itself; and these, by infinite pyramids
diffused in the air, represent this body
throughout space and on every side. ”  
- Leonardo da Vinci

Work Cited 

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/daguerreotype/file.htmlhttp://gardenofpraise.com/art17.htm

http://www.suite101.com/content/mezzotints-copying-portraits-before-photography-a204322

 http://gardenofpraise.com/art17.htm