Principle involved in Photography

In photography, the light writes when it strikes minute crystals of light sensitive surfaces
(films and photographic papers), a mechanical device (camera) and chemical processing (film
development and printing). As a process, photography is the method of using light to produce
identical image of an object that can be preserved permanently by employing:

camera: camera use to regulate, absorb and filter light

film and any sensitized material to record light

PHOTOGRAPHY, ITS MEANING

Photography was derived from Greek words, photo which means light and graphy that
means to draw

The production of a permanent record of an image by the combined action of light and
chemical processing.

PHOTOGRAPHIC RAYS

What is light? Many as good while darkness the opposite as bad have associated light.
In case of anxiety, fright, severe mental disorders and depression many experienced dream like
apparitions. In states of religious ecstasy, visions and hallucinations occur which can be
attributed to the high sensitivity of the retina. Many frequently perceived light impressions, which
cannot be attributed to external stimuli of an altogether different kind, such as pressure, impact
and functional disturbances in our body and nervous system.

Everyone also knows light. It excites the retina of the eye. Light makes things visible.
There is no exaggeration to say that man cannot live without light. Same things are true in
photography, because light is needed to produce a photograph.

II. LIGHT AND THE EYE

 Our eyes are sensitive to light, which give us information about the shapes, colors and
movements of objects around us. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and we know it
travels in the form of waves. The complete range of electromagnetic spectrum and our eyes are
capable of seeing only part of the spectrum. We can see a large part of the wavelengths emitted
by the sun, that is white light but the sun also emits other waves, which we cannot see.

Infra red is a wavelength emitted by the sun which cannot be seen, though we can feel it
in our bodies as warmth or heat. Ultra violet is another form of light we cannot see, but we know
about it because it tans our skin in summer.

III. HOW LIGHT BEHAVES

Light moves in straight lines from its source, but it can be bent and scattered by objects
placed in its path. We see rays of sunlight streaming through a window on a sunny day because
some of the light is scattered by dust particles in the air. We can only see a ray of light when it
strikes the eye directly. Then it forms an image of the object from which it has come, either the
light source itself, or something from which it has been reflected, such as a motorcar. Non-
luminous objects are one, which are only visible when they reflect the light from a light source.
In a totally dark room, you would not be able to see a desk, but you would be able to see the
hands of a luminous clock. If the totally black room had no dust particles floating around it, you
would not able to see the beam of light, but only the light source itself and any object that
reflects the light.

IV. SPEED OF LIGHT

Even an electric light appears to glow immediately it is switched on, a small but definite
time lag occurs between the light coming on and the electromagnetic radiation entering our
eyes. In a room, this time lag is too short to be noticeable, but for distant objects like stars, the
lag is thousand of years. Even light from the moon, which is relatively close to earth,
experiences a time lag of one second. The speed of light, measured in a vacuum is 299, 792.5
km/sec (approximately 186,281 miles/sec / 186,000).

V. BEHAVIOR OF LIGHT

INTERFERENCE - Any phenomenon having a periodic disturbance of some sort and

travels outward from a source is called a wave. To understand how energy can travels in waves,
think of a wooden log floating in the ocean. Light maybe visualized as such as the high points
are called crest while the low points are called troughs. The distance between two successive
crest and troughs is called a wavelength.

When two light beams cross, they may interfere in such a way that the resultant intensity
pattern is affected

When two waves meet or interfere, they reinforce one another (crest form a higher crest
than either) at some points and annul one another (crest of one wave interfere with the trough of
the other) at other points.

The crest of one wave meets the trough of another wave. The phenomenon is called
annulment of waves.

The British physicist Thomas Young in the experiment illustrated first demonstrated
such an interference pattern. Light that had passed through one pinhole illuminated an
opaque surface that contained two pinholes. The light that passed through the two pinholes
formed a pattern of alternately bright and dark circular fringes on a screen. Wavelets are
drawn in the illustration to show that at points such as A, C, and E (intersection of solid line
with solid line) the waves from the two pinholes arrive in phase and combine to increase the
intensity. At other points, such as B and D (intersection of solid line with dashed line), the
waves are 180° out of phase and cancel each other.

DIFFRACTION – light in space and not within the gravitational field of any object travels in a
straight line. The bending of light around an object gives rise to the phenomenon called
diffraction. This phenomenon is responsible for the partial illumination of object parts not directly
in the path of the light.