PHOTOGRAPHY

The word photograph comes from two Greek words - photos meaning light and graphein meaning to draw.Without light there is no sight and no photographs of the type in this exhibition. Light from objects enters the camera and hits the film while the shutter is open. This causes a chemical reaction. Developing and fixing the film involve further chemical reactions to produce the photograph itself. Black and white photographic film is essentially composed of a layer of photographic emulsion on a thin plastic base, along with other layers that provide structure and protection. The 'active ingredient' in the photographic emulsion is a silver halide that is sensitive to light. When exposed to light the silver halide crystals produce a latent image as they begin to break down into black specks of metallic silver. Developing the film completes the formation of silver to produce a negative of the picture.A photographic print is made by allowing light to shine through the negative onto light sensitive photographic paper, usually through an enlarger. Colour films contain three emulsion layers on a plastic base. Each of these layers is sensitive to a different colour of light - yellow, cyan and magenta. Combinations of these three colours produce other colours. Developers for colour films contain dye couplers which attach dyes to the silver that forms during the development of a colour film.  The silver is then dissolved, leaving behind the dye.

In photography, the photographer has control over a number of variables. These determine the quality of a particular photograph.The photographer obviously selects the subject. With wildlife photography it may be that many other variables are to an extent out of the control of the photographer. After all it is wild life. Patience is a definite virtue! The variables that are under control are those relating to the camera, the film and lighting in terms of the situation and/or time of day selected for the photographing. I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.. :)

                                                                                                                                                                                        --LyxaAlmine x.o.x.o