 Good harvest fellow land dwellers. Today we're going to be taking a look at an image that is the very definition of the words Oldish today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace What's worse than accidentally slamming your testicles in the oven door? That's right the Kodak price hike Perhaps with the cost of film going up. It's time to return to the roots Degarot types the man that the process is named after Lewis Degaray is actually known for taking what many consider to be the First known photo of a human being. Here's the photo shot on HP 5 pushed about 200 stops And here's our lucky first human ever photographed either getting a shoe shined or bartering for sexual favors We'll never know so looking at Lewis Degaray's photo from 1839 I wanted to make a video about how I think that this photo is more than just a historical landmark I Legitimately believe this photo deserves more recognition for its art than its technical Accomplishments and I'm prepared to arm wrestle to the death to prove it but first I think it might be crucial to understand the backstory of this photo 1839 was a long time ago and there wasn't shit to do back then so some people decided to start playing around with some chemicals Which is something film photographers and people who make meth have in common Lewis Degaray's mentor Joseph Neeps took this banger in 1826 while experimenting with a camera obscura and some photosensitive chemicals It's considered the first photograph ever taken and took somewhere around eight hours to expose though Some people think it probably actually took days after Neeps passed away Lewis Degaray took up his mantle like Batman and found a way to do the exposing process much faster He began by taking pictures of artsy bulls around his apartment like he was quarantined in 2020 or something but eventually he had the crazy idea to point the camera obscura out towards the city streets of Paris And he snapped this photo which allegedly took about 10 minutes to expose But why are you prepared to defend this photos artsy side to the death Jason though? Perhaps it wasn't intentional this photo displays a lot of strong compositional techniques that we still rely on today as well as a Subjectively strong in-frame narrative, but where do we start? Let's talk composition and boy is this one a doozy What is it exactly that makes a good composition perhaps it's not so simply defined I think that it's a mix of balance and simplicity one of the most popular ways to look at composition is the Fibonacci spiral It's a technique that's been in use way longer than you might think though often referred to as the golden ratio It dates back way beyond the era of neat rock mounds in the desert That's right The golden ratio was first dropped by mother nature herself in the year negative 13.7 billion but in terms of photography this whole thing breaks down pretty simply the Fibonacci spiral essentially breaks your total frame into Exponentially smaller sections until you arrive in an area where the subject or center of attention should naturally reside But what happens when we lay this nautilus looking mother f***er on top of Louis de Garret's daguerreotype from 1839? Well, it looks like our shoe shine guy is pretty dang close to where he's supposed to be according to our all-knowing and all-seeing Spiral, but let's talk about another compositional technique that's deep at work in this photo layering for your information There's a lot more to photos and people think photos are like onions They stink. Yes. No. Oh, they make you crack layers Onions have layers photos have layers onions have layers You get it a basic example of layering in photography is just by having a foreground mid-ground and background Clearly represented in the photo. This helps establish the environment, but it also gives the photo a more three-dimensional feel Well, daguerre is back at it again. We've got buildings in the foreground We've got our subject and some nice park details in the mid-ground and even more buildings in the background to the deep background It's f***ing tight, dude It's more three-dimensional than my personal character arc after 83 episodes on this channel But that more or less brings me to my next point leading lines leading lines are used by photographers painters and Attractive buff dudes to lead your eye towards something this photo is no exception Mainly the curve of the street and the array of park lamps and a path that lead us right to our guy showing off His new Jordans furthermore from there The street kind of takes our eyes and forces us to follow it along into the deep background Making you absorb all the layers in their oniony goodness But perhaps maybe it's time to look at the cherry on top of this whole thing the lighting It is of my personal opinion and perhaps yours too that lighting is just about the most important thing in photography Well, the lighting in this photo is on point especially in the background to the left of the frame My biggest inspiration of all time is the painter Edward Hopper and studying a lot of Edward Hopper's work I realized that lighting creates the mood and to Gary's photo is very moody One thing that I as well as a lot of other people enjoy about Edward Hopper's work is that it is very Melancholic oftentimes when I look at Edward Hopper's work I feel like I'm looking into a world where no one else exists except the people in the frame And that's something that I absolutely love about his work now to go a step further I would say that I feel the same way about to Gary's photo The bustling streets of Paris feel desolate the 10 minute or so exposure definitely had something to do with this Turning every moving thing into a ghost But perhaps the scope of the scene paired with a single remarkable figure makes it all feel isolated yet fantastical Now you might hear all this and think wow this daguerre guy is kind of a badass mother after all Let me stop you right there I truly think that this fantastic photo was a culmination of a lot of Dumb luck namely that Lewis daguerre just happened to live in an apartment with just the right height and angle so that he can capture a Pleasant composition and perhaps luckiest of all our guy down here didn't have to do except stand there for 10 minutes Getting a shoe shined or kicking the shoe shiner in the dick. We still don't know Daguerre took this photo not knowing what to expect in all honesty It's probably a test photo again It was around a 10 minute exposure daguerre didn't know that this guy down here would become the subject let alone that He would become globally recognized as the first photo of a human being but how do you explain everything else compositionally? Here's the thing Lewis daguerre was no dumb ass before instagram and photos even existed all anyone had were paintings But painters figured this out a long time ago Rembrandt was like Good lighting is the player and da Vinci Bellini and Raphael were like compositions Lit fam since daguerre came from kind of an artistic background It's entirely within the realm of possibility that he realized the correlation between painting a composition And composing a photographic composition thus he might have started applying some of these tried and true techniques to his experiments Lastly I'd like to wrap this up by stating that yes time itself does make photos more interesting It doesn't turn a photo into a good photo But I suppose it might add some subtext if you took a photo of the boring street that you live on today And then didn't look at it for 180 years I have no doubt in my mind that that photo would at least be mildly interesting Being able to peer back in time through photography is the first time that we as humans were able to break free of linear time Photography is one of the greatest achievements of mankind and this daguerre type is an excellent example of why I won't get into it But I could also talk about how cool the texture of this photo looks Even though it looks like it was run over by a billion leaking porta potty trucks Or perhaps even how dope it is that it has what looks like a light leak But those things are all surface level Literally what makes a photo art to me is the lasting impact that it has on the viewer and to me I think daguerre's image hits hard I certainly think that this photo is incredible and hopefully now you do too Or maybe you still think it looks like microwaved illford xp2 I don't know what I do know is that I want to thank today's sponsor Squarespace have you reached that point in photography where you'd like to start selling your prints or putting together books for your patrons to purchase? 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It'd be really cool to do a daguerreotype someday But from my understanding it requires a lot of nuance and components that I don't have and oh crap backster hasn't been in this video yet