164 articles
Portrait of Tenochtitlan
Portrait of Tenochtitlan (Retrato de Tenochtitlán) is Thomas Kole's 2023 open-source 3D reconstruction of the Mexica capital as of 1518, built in Blender with drone comparisons of modern Mexico City, published in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl under CC BY 4.0.
Portrait photography
Portrait photography captures a person's likeness, personality, and mood through deliberate lighting, pose, and composition. It spans the 1839 daguerreotype, calotype studios, environmental portraiture, and computational smartphone portrait modes.
Post-mortem photography
Post-mortem photography, also called memorial portraiture or memento mori photography, is the photographing of recently deceased people, common in the Victorian era and now mainly a forensic and bereavement practice.
Raw image format
Raw image format: family of camera file formats (CR2/CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG) storing minimally processed sensor data plus metadata, deferring demosaicing, white balance, and sharpening to computer-side processing; DNG is the open TIFF-based standard.
Rhein II
Rhein II (Rhine II) is a 1999 large-format digitally edited color photograph of the Rhine near Düsseldorf by Andreas Gursky; an edition of six C-prints, one sold for about $4.3 million in 2011.
Roll film
Roll film is photographic film wound on a spool with opaque paper backing for daylight handling, used in medium-format cameras since George Eastman's 1885 roll film.
Salt print
A salt print, also called a salted paper print, is a photographic positive print on paper, the earliest paper print process, invented by William Henry Fox Talbot around 1839.
Shutter speed
Shutter speed, or exposure time, is how long a camera's film or sensor is exposed to light. One of the exposure triangle's three controls with aperture and ISO. Fast speeds like 1/250 s freeze motion; slow speeds blur it; video uses 1/48 s at 24 fps.
Slide show
Slide show (also slideshow): a sequential display of still images, from magic lantern and 35mm photographic slide projection to modern digital slideshow software with transitions, narration, and music.
Social documentary photography
Social documentary photography records human life and living conditions to reveal social injustice and advocate reform, differing from photojournalism in running for years on social issues rather than breaking news.
Something More
Something More is a 1989 series of nine staged photographs by the Australian artist Tracey Moffatt, her first major photographic series and the work that brought her international recognition.
Speed Graphic
The Speed Graphic was a Graflex folding press camera produced from 1912 to 1973, the standard camera of American photojournalism from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Staged photography
Staged photography is the deliberate arranging or constructing of a scene before the camera, rather than recording a spontaneous moment; it is also called directorial photography.
Stereograph
A stereograph is a card bearing two nearly identical photographs that fuse into a single three-dimensional image when viewed through a stereoscope, popular from 1870 to 1920.
Stock photography
Stock photography: licensing pre-made images to advertising, publishing and design customers. Models include royalty-free, rights-managed, and editorial-only; major agencies include Getty Images (founded 1995), Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, now reshaped by generative AI competition.
Straight photography
Straight photography is a style of photography producing sharp, unmanipulated images from a single negative, most prominent in the United States from 1920 to 1940 through Group f/64.
Street photography
Street photography is a photographic genre in which photographers capture candid, unposed images of ordinary life in public spaces, distinguished from documentary photography and photojournalism by its expressive, spontaneous approach.
Sunny 16 rule
Sunny 16 rule (Sunny f/16 rule): a film-era photography rule of thumb for exposure without a light meter, setting f/16 at a shutter speed equal to 1/ISO in bright sun, with a condition ladder from f/22 snow to f/4 sunset.
Tartan Ribbon
Tartan Ribbon is an 1861 photograph of a striped Scottish ribbon bow, generally described as the world's first durable color photograph, demonstrated by James Clerk Maxwell in London.
Tennis Girl
Tennis Girl, also called the Athena Tennis Girl poster, is a 1976 photograph by Martin Elliott of 18-year-old Fiona Butler on Birmingham tennis courts, sold from 1978 as a poster with over 2 million copies.
The Decisive Moment
The decisive moment is a photography concept from Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1952 book Images à la Sauvette, describing when an event's significance and a precise arrangement of forms meet in a single frame.
The Flatiron
The Flatiron is a famous early 1900s photograph of New York's Flatiron Building, made in versions by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903 and Edward Steichen in 1904.
The Horse in Motion
The Horse in Motion is a series of sequential photographs made by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, proving that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves at once.
The Pond—Moonlight
The Pond—Moonlight is a 1904 photograph by Edward Steichen showing moonlight on a pond with reflected trees at Mamaroneck, New York; a print sold for $2,928,000 in 2006, then an auction record for a photograph.
The Roaring Lion
The Roaring Lion is a 1941 portrait photograph of Winston Churchill by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, taken in Ottawa moments after Karsh removed his cigar.
The Sweet Flypaper of Life
The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a 1955 photobook pairing Roy DeCarava's photographs of daily life in Harlem with a fictional narrative by Langston Hughes.
The Terror of War
The Terror of War, also called Napalm Girl, is Nick Ut's June 8, 1972 Associated Press photograph of Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm strike near Trang Bang, Vietnam; it won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year, and its authorship is now disputed.
The Tetons and the Snake River
The Tetons and the Snake River is a 1942 black-and-white photograph by Ansel Adams showing the Snake River winding below the Teton Range in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
The Two Ways of Life
The Two Ways of Life is an 1857 composite photograph by Oscar Gustav Rejlander combining more than thirty negatives into a moral allegory of vice and virtue.
Three-point lighting
Three-point lighting (key-fill-back) is the standard subject-lighting setup in film, video, and photography: key at ~45 degrees sets exposure, fill softens shadows, back light separates subject from background.