PHOTOGRAPHIC STYLES
Originally all photography was black and white, and the “monochrome look”, with the use of such effects a simulated optical filtering to enhance or diminish the rendering of different light wavelengths, has been a popular art form for decades. Photographers (both amateur and professional) continued to use black and white film long after colour photography was developed and it is only since the 1980s that colour photography has gained widespread acceptance amongst serious photographers.Even today, many photographers continue to produce monochrome photographs, and some colour digital images are reprocessed to create black and white photographs, and there are now digital cameras that can be set to produce monochrome images.
The first colour photography plates reached the market in 1907, which was followed by the German company Agfa which produced “Agfacolour” in 1932, and in 1935 the first modern colour film was introduced by Kodak, called Kodachrome, which was based on three colour emulsions. Most modern colour film is based on Agfacolour technology, and instant colour film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.
The reproduction of colour film images may be made in the form of a positive transparency which may be viewed in a slide projector, or as colour negatives which are then used to create positive enlargements on paper. Slide shows, using colour transparencies were very popular amongst amateur photographers for many years, but colour ‘prints’ have been the most commonly used in recent years, following the introduction of automatic colour photo printing equipment.