Photography as art

The oldest surviving photograph taken with a camera was made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in France around 1826 to 1827.
In 1839, Louis Daguerre announced the daguerreotype, a detailed image on a metal plate.
In England, William Henry Fox Talbot developed a negative-positive process, so many prints could be made from one negative.
Anna Atkins (British, 1799 to 1871) used cyanotypes (blue sun prints) to record plants, publishing Photographs of British Algae from 1843.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815 to 1879) made expressive portraits in the 1860s and 1870s.

Aperture: the size of the opening that lets light in. A wide aperture (a small f-number, such as f/2) gives a shallow depth of field: the subject is sharp and the background blurred.
Shutter speed: how long the shutter stays open. A fast shutter freezes movement; a slow shutter blurs it.
ISO: how sensitive the camera is to light. High ISO helps in the dark but adds grain (noise).
Focus: which part of the image is sharp.

Rule of thirds: place key subjects on the lines of a 3 by 3 grid.
Leading lines: lines such as roads or fences that lead the eye into the picture.
Viewpoint: a high angle looks down; a low angle looks up and can make subjects look powerful.
Framing: using doorways or branches to frame the subject.
The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 to 2004) talked about the 'decisive moment'.
A photogram is made without a camera by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light. Man Ray (American) called his 'rayographs'.
David Hockney made photo-collages called joiners in the 1980s.