10 amazing things you didn't know about photography!

Welcome! To the first article of Culturious,today we are going to inform you about 10 Amazing things you didn’t know about vending machines abut photography!

1. Every two minutes we snap more pictures than the whole of humanity did in the 1800s.

It’s estimated only a few million pictures were taken in the 80 years before the first commercial camera was introduced. In 1999, the peak of the film-camera industry, Kodak reported that people took around 80 bn photos. Nowadays it is very hard to estimate how many photos are taken annually, but here are some statistics for 2015. According to Benedict Evans, People share 730 bn photos per year on Facebook, 255 bn – on WhatsApp and around 22 bn – on Instagram. And don’t even get us started on Snapchat, Apple’s iMessage, WeChat and other small messaging and photo-sharing apps. We can only estimate that around 3 trillion of photos will be taken this year. Or more!

2. Cheerleader effect: Individuals seem more attractive on group photos than on individual portraits.

Thinking about uploading a new photo on Facebook? Better pick one where you are around friends! According to the research of Drew Walker and Edward Vul at the University of California, individual faces appear more attractive when presented in a group than when presented alone. This phenomenon was called the “Cheerleader effect”

3. People started making funny cats photos in the 19th century.

Images and videos of cats create one of the most viewed content on the Internet – and let’s admit it, we are very happy about it. Interesting thing is, cats have been viral since the 1870s when the Brighton photographer Harry Pointer became famous for his funny cat pictures. Pointer began his career taking conventional photos of cats but soon realized that people enjoyed more pictures of cats in ridiculous poses, unusual settings or with a silly facial expression.

4. People never smiled on the old photos because they had to stay still for hours.

Over the years, many theories have popped up trying to explain why people never smiled in old photographs. The most popular ones were that people didn’t want to show their bad teeth or that people thought smiling made them look ridiculous. In fact, due to insanely long exposure times, making one shot took hours. Try to keep a smiling face for a couple of hours – not only your facial muscles will start killing you after a while – your smile will look more creepy than sincere.

5. The largest photo competition ever held received 353, 768 entries.

According to the Gunnies Book of World Records, the largest photography competition entrant is achieved by Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland from the Netherlands at the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 competition. From the 1st of September to the 15th of October, exactly 353, 768 photos were submitted to the contest. Wiki Loves Monuments is an annual photo competition held by the Wikipedia community members. Participants submit pictures of different historical monuments and heritage sites. This is the winning photo was taken by Parnav Singh.

6. The most viewed photograph in history is the Windows XP’s default wallpaper called “Bliss”.

Bliss was taken in 1996 (years before Windows XP was launched) in Sonoma County, California by an American photographer Charles O’Rear. He snapped the picture on film with a medium-format camera. Although many claim that the photo was digitally manipulated, O’Rear claims it never was. Right now the landscape looks different – grapevines were planted on the hill so now Bliss is impossible to duplicate.

7. The chemicals used in the development of photographs where extremely dangerous

including mercury, silver nitrate, lye, and more. These chemicals were extremely dangerous and many photographers had to take time off from their work due to illness caused by exposure to the chemicals. Over time, prolonged contact with these chemicals and metals could lead to madness or even death. Photography before the digital age was serious, potentially life-threatening business!

8. And it wasn’t just the chemicals from the developing solution that were dangerous.

Early flash powder ingredients included Potassium chloride and aluminium which were mixed to create the flash for images. It was not uncommon for these to be mixed incorrectly and explode more violently than intended.

9. The first color photograph was taken in 1861 by James Maxwell,
the British physicist.

10. The oldest camera was sold at the auction in Vienna in 2007

setting all-time overall record and having become the most expensive camera
ever sold at auction. Rarity called “Daguerrotype Susses Freres” was
sold for nearly eight hundred thousand U.S. dollars. The starting price was 100
000 euros.

That’s it for today! I sure did not know all these great facts before! What about you?Want me to create another article about something else?Let me know down in the comments. And remember stay CULTURIOUS!

"Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs."
–Thomas Wolfe