Happy World Photography Day

Free Gift to The World

On this day in 1839, the French government announced a revolutionary, "free gift to the world." That gift was photography, ready to start a societal shift full of realizaiton, falsification, vainalities (is that a word?) and banalities. What the French government was actually announcing was the invention of the Daguerreotype process, developed by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, though photography had been invented (arguably) about 13 years earlier by Joseph Niépce with his eight hour "heliograph" exposure:

View From the Window at Le Gras

And here we are now, 172 years later, with camera phones and fake tilt-shifts, still snappin' away. So take this day to remember where photography came from, and what that means to you as a photographer, because you most undoubtably are in some fashion. And the next time you're waiting for your instigram app to load up, just remember, you're writing with light, which is badass; respect.