Is Photography Dead? The Mobile Photo Explosion [Infographic]

Photography has come a long way since the first photograph. The first permanent photo was taken in 1826 of the “view from the window at Le Gras” and required an 8 hour exposure. This photo was black and white and the first color photograph was taken 35 years later in 1861. Since the first photograph taken 186 years ago, more than 3.5 trillion photos have been taken.

Just a few years later in 1878, the first high speed photograph was taken by Eadweard Muybridge using a series of trip wires. Then in 1888 the first Kodak camera was invented and contained 20-foot roll of paper enough for 100 2.5 inch diameter circular pictures. A year later an improved camera was released with rolls of film, instead of paper. And just a year after that in 1890, Kodak released the “Brownie”, which was a box roll-film camera and cost only $1.

In 1960 we were introduced to digital photos which were taken from the moon. NASA converted from using analog to digital signals with their space probes to map the surface of the moon. Computer technology was also advancing at this time and NASA used computers to enhance the images that the space probes were sending. In the same year, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the first commercial electronic camera.

With a big breakthrough, Texas Instruments patented the very first film-less electronic camera in 1972. The first consumer-level digital camera that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were released in 1994 and progressing to today. Since the social explosion, photographs are being shared daily, to be exact, 70% of Facebook activity is based on photographs.

A photo is worth a 1,000 words and they’re still becoming increasingly popular and shared. A new photo application was released in the last 2 years called Instagram and the app allows you to place filters on your photos for interesting effects. As of March 2012, Instagram has 27 million users and 26 photos uploaded every second. And in April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1.01 billion.

Every mobile phone includes a camera nowadays and almost all of them have the capability to upload your photos to the social networking site of your choosing. When a photo is run through several photo apps before it is published it is called “apping”. Apping takes your original photo and allows you to edit/crop and tone, add gradient and custom text to your photo. To add text to your favorite photo, give Overgram a try, you’ll be loving your pictures more and more.

Check out the infographic below to learn more about how photography has progressed over the years.

Courtesy of Overgram