July 12 is a special day for everybody who is indifferent to photography – International Photographers’ Day which is celebrated worldwide today.
French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is considered to have created the first photograph. His black-and-white ‘View from the window at Le Gras’ was taken in 1826. Having covered a thin metal plate with a thin layer of asphalt and exposed it to the sun in a camera obscura, after 8 hours, Niépce developed the world's first "reflection of the visible".
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First color photos were produced in the middle of the XIX century. Three cameras were used to produce them: each camera was equipped with a light filter (red, green and blue), and then the images were connected. The first color picture ‘Tartan was made by James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and physicist, in 1861.
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The pioneer in color photography in Russia was Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, a photographer, chemist and member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. He made the famous color photo of Leo Tolstoy, as well as a number of world-known color photos of pre-revolutionary Russia.
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Many members of the Society have made a great contribution to the development of photography. For example, the world famous National Geographic magazine published the first photographs of Tibet taken by members of the Society Gombojab Tsybikov and Ovshe Norzunov.
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The Russian Geographical Society is glad to congratulate professionals, amateurs and newcomers of photography as well participants in the photo contest ‘The Most Beautiful Country’ whose amazing works surprise the contest jury and exhibition visitors from year to year. We wish you inspiration, success, beautiful images and great ideas!