Volume V, Photography

There are many things in life that we come across by accident.

Maybe I didn't want to put in any effort at first.

However, as time and progress progressed, it became something that I loved and began to work for from the bottom of my heart.

Photography, for example!

Because of my family, I was introduced to photography relatively early.

From the first color photo taken in the 100th day when I was a child, to the current 50th birthday candle; From being displayed in the window of the county photo studio, to accompanying his wife and daughter to take pictures some time ago, the photographer kept saying "Mr. step aside first"; From quietly fiddling with the seagull's black and white 120 film camera in the children's park at a class reunion, to the recent occasional photography incident, and being praised for taking pictures so well......

I can say that photography has always been with me growing up.

Of course, my understanding of photography has also grown as I grew up.

The earliest understanding of photography is to use a camera to photograph people, the difference is only the number of people, I saw the photo of a wall as long as a wall from Wu Guifang's house, which is full of people.

So my earliest understanding of photographs was to photograph people.

As for flowers, birds, fish, insects, mountains, rivers, building products, etc., everything can be formed, and that was only later learned.

Even though I knew, I didn't feel anything, but I still used my camera to take pictures.

It wasn't until around 2016 that there was a real awareness that photography could also be an art in its own right.

Chapter 37. The environment starts with a photo of my great-grandparents

In the previous chapters, I emphasized that the impact of the environment on a person is huge, and the environment had a great impact on me when I was growing up.

The same is true of this verse.

We all know that the camera was invented just over a hundred years ago.

It is generally accepted that it was in 1839 that France's Daguerre made the first practical daguerreotype camera.

In fact, even many people in the photography circle don't know that the principle of small hole imaging was discovered relatively early in China. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the "Book of Ink" was discussed, and this book recorded in detail the linear advance and reflection of light, as well as the imaging phenomenon of plane mirrors and concave and convex mirrors.

Shen Kuo of the Northern Song Dynasty has such a sentence in his "Mengxi Writings": "The chieftain is said to be the shadow of the sea turning over the tower, and it is common sense that the shadow enters the window." This means that when things and scenery pass through small gaps (pinholes), shadows must be reflected, and it is normal for the sea to appear in the sky and the top of the pagoda downward.

It is a pity that the industrial system of our country has not kept up with the long feudal society, otherwise many of those inventions (the word discovery should be more practical) that originated from us, led by the four major inventions, could have been produced.

The focus of the four major inventions is on the "big", and the other "medium" and "small" inventions are innumerable. We learned a lot of these things during our school years, such as the principle of leverage and the hook three strands, four strings and five in the "Zhou Ji Sutra", such as the buoyancy principle in "Lü's Spring and Autumn Period", such as the magnet attraction principle in "Huainanzi", etc., if the industrial system can keep up......

According to Baidu's entry, the earliest cameras were brought to China in 1846 (1844) by Jules Itier (1843-1846), a Frenchman who worked for the Chinese Customs. It originated after the outbreak of the First Opium War when China and Britain signed the unequal Treaty of Nanjing, and China opened five treaty ports to foreign countries. Only then did a large number of merchants and missionaries come to our country. During this period, photography technology was also introduced to Hong Kong and Guangzhou in China.

The earliest photo studio that can be examined today is basically around 1851, when it was still the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. Because most of them were originally operated by painters, and they were engaged in photography business at the same time as portraits, so they were called "painting buildings" or "shadow complementary" at that time, which was also the earliest title of photo studios in China.

For example, the earliest "Yichang Art Building" also had the words "photographer and portraitist" printed on the logo on the back of the photograph.

At that time, people were generally interested in their own portraits being able to shine clearly. Before that, people had to find artists who wanted to have their own portraits, and they could paint them. Due to the different skills of the painters, the paintings drawn are also different. In any case, it can't catch up with the reality of the photo. Therefore, people began to be extremely interested in Xiangji, which led to many businesses directly naming "Xiangguan" (not Xiangguan).

There's also a little common sense here, the earliest photos left behind are basically people sitting. Many people don't know why. This is because the earliest cameras used daylight to sense light, which was very slow, sometimes taking 9 to 20 seconds, during which time the customer could not move, so the first people to take pictures were sitting, and not only a chair was needed, but also a cushion was added to the head to fix it.

Before taking a picture, the photographer (I didn't know what it was called at the time) took a wooden board and took a picture, and then opened the lens cover, at this time the customer could not move, and then began to count, sometimes to 20, many people said that this action of taking a wooden board is the origin of taking pictures.

I don't know if the customers will laugh when they count, but the reason why I have such an image in my mind is that there is a time when everyone needs to shoot a short video. If I had used the front-facing camera, the characters would be mirrored, so I asked my wife to hold my phone for me, while I sat upright facing the camera with the lines I had already written.

I've done it myself before, and I've basically done it all once.

This time, it was filmed five or six times.

This is because my wife felt funny when she started watching me recite words seriously from the beginning of holding her mobile phone, she kept laughing, and I could bear it at first, and I couldn't hold on to it halfway through and laughed.

I can only record it again, she laughs again, and I laugh again.

There is no way but to do it again and again.

Mobile phone storage is easier to do, even if it is five or six more times is just a waste of time, at least it doesn't cost money.

If you don't know how to solve this problem when you take pictures early on because the guys are counting and you don't know how they solve this problem, do you have to change several negatives when you meet a guy like my wife?

Because Edison only invented the electric light in 1879, far later than the invention of the camera, so the earliest "image museum" was built above the second floor, which is also the origin of the word photo studio, in order to fully light, naturally it is impossible to take pictures at night.

It wasn't until the application of electric lights that it was possible to open for business in the morning and evening.

Although the first photo gallery is 170 years ago, I believe that most people will never have photos more than 100 years ago in their homes, except for people who buy them for collection.

So I can definitely add the word "environment" before my photography hobby.

The two photos below were sent to me by my father, his grandparents.

It is impossible to verify when it was taken.

But it is certain that it is certainly far more than a hundred years.

This is because his father is 87 years old this year, so his grandparents should be the first batch of photos taken in the photo studio.

That's legacy.

What is even more valuable is that it has survived so many wars and turmoil to the present. Although the photos have been yellowed and slightly damaged in some places, the images of the two elderly people are still so clear, which also proves that the Tian family has a tradition of keeping the photos.

This is well documented.

This is my grandparents.

The photographs of this period are much clearer. In my memory, because I lived with my grandfather for a while when I was young, I still have a deep impression of him, but unfortunately I was too young to know how to play, and I didn't have the time or consciousness to sit down and listen to my grandfather talk about him carefully.

This is not as good as her sister, at least she once wrote a letter to her grandfather as soon as she was admitted to university, and her grandfather was extremely happy at that time, and happily said in the tunzi that his granddaughter was admitted to university.

I didn't.

That's a pity.

In my hometown, Xizhangguantun Village, Songlou Town, Xiajin County, DZ City, SD Province, the surname Tian is definitely a big surname. I felt this a few times when I was growing up.

When I went back, I found that in the family tree, there were a large number of people in my ligature and my son's generation, and even my grandson's generation of Runzi, and I only cared about these words back then.

Now it seems that only such a big family has the strength to take pictures more than a hundred years ago.

According to my parents' recollections, I followed my parents back to see my grandparents when I was very young, but at that time I should have been very young and had no impression. In addition, I was too young when my grandmother died, so I didn't have an impression of my grandmother. Luckily, there are photos left, so at least you can get an idea of what she looks like. Now it seems that I was a little over 2 years old when my grandfather took this picture with me, and from the photo, my mouth shape is a little like my grandmother's.

People's memories will fade with the passage of time, and slowly many people and things will disappear into the depths of memory.

Luckily, someone invented the photo.

So when I see my grandfather's photos now, I will remember the time when we were together. Even though I didn't know how to cherish it at the time.

It's a pity that I can't go back!

By the time my parents arrived, the photos were in color.

Although this color was painted in oil paint by the painters of the photo studio.

But I believe that in the era of 1962 and 1967, very few people thought of leaving a youthful figure! This is definitely the best money spent that year.

Not to mention that they can't think of what it was like when they are 80 years old, and even when I am 50, I can't remember what it was like if I don't look at the photos.

Time is too fast. There are a lot of photos of the parents. There are a lot of photo albums.

records the smoke-like past of their time.

I remember that the photos I saw when I was a child were basically kept in two places.

One is hung in a large frame on the wall. This frame is different from the one on the outside of the big wedding photos that we all put on the wall in our homes now, but then basically put away, the frame at that time consisted of a large glass in the front, a plywood in the back, and dozens of photos in the mezzanine.

Another place to save your photos is the album. At that time, photo albums basically consisted of a page of black cardboard, then a page of translucent white paper, then a page of black cardboard, and then a page of translucent white paper. After buying back the album, you should buy a bunch of various colored kraft paper photo corner stickers, which are used to insert the four corners of the photo and then smear paste behind the photo corner stickers to fix them.

It seems that the photos I took before junior high school were all saved like this.

After that, it's my picture. I have a lot of photos, at least hundreds of black and white photos from my childhood alone.

From the 100 days of birth to the present, basically every stage has not been left behind.

A big reason why I can write a memoir today is because I have such photos and all kinds of used objects that I have kept, which record my experiences back then, and I can still remember many things in my mind because I read them regularly, so I can write this memoir.

Otherwise, I wouldn't dare to think about it.

Most of my photos at that time were kept in albums.

There are about three kinds of albums that I have experienced.

The first is the black hard paper and kraft paper that I just mentioned.

The second is not easy to describe. Each page of the album is composed of a kind of hard white paper coated with glue on the front and back, and then a piece of transparent and rigid plastic paper is attached to the outside, and this kind of album basically stores black and white photos. The photo can be glued directly to the glue that comes with the cardboard, so you don't need to stick it on the corners of the kraft paper. It seems that this kind of album did not take long to be phased out, because color photos quickly became popular.

The third type is basically a special color photo. At that time, the color photos commonly used in the home were basically the same size, and it was enough to insert the photos. This is the kind of book I won in the second prize of the city's chemistry competition in junior high school.

Since I had children, I have also started to make memories for them. There are more photos of them. From my son starting to read "Little Red Riding Hood" in my arms, to scribbling with a paintbrush when he grew up, to crying and dancing with his little red face in kindergarten, every photo is a memory.

Look at my daughter, from her brother watching curiously at her bedside when she was born, to playing with baby pigeons in the park, to frog jumping in the oil field, to growing up as a volunteer......

Photographs record their growing years.

And these photos are just the beginning. In the years to come, there will be different photos, different scenes, and different times to record their future memories.

Of course, it is indispensable to be leisurely with his wife in the warm spring days, recording her smiling faces in the camera, and slowly appreciating them in the circle of friends when they come back, which is naturally very happy.

With the passage of time, now we basically use electronic photos taken by mobile phones, which can be saved at any time, and there is no need to spend money to expand and print them out. And theoretically, it can be appreciated at any time.

It's a pity that it's only theoretical.

I don't know what's going on with other people. Since I started taking photos with my phone, the number of photos has skyrocketed, and it's really convenient to take pictures of scenes that I thought were worth recording at the time. It's just that the more you take photos, the more you take it, the more you export it to the computer if the storage of the phone is not enough, and you copy out N more folders unconsciously.

I haven't looked at the photographs that have been stored in electronic documents over the years.

Even writing a memoir this time to find a certain photograph from a certain period of time has almost become a huge project.

There are too many photos.,There are a few scenes I'm sure I photographed.,But I just can't find it.。。

Forget it, I can only comfort myself: I can't find it only temporarily, anyway, in the computer, maybe I'll encounter it sometime.

In any case, from the photos of my great-grandparents to the current number of digital photographs, it was inevitable that I would eventually fall in love with photography under the influence of the never-ending photographic environment. Yes, with so much inheritance, it's only a matter of time before you pick up a camera. Not to mention that when I was very young, I started having cameras at home. Even though it was borrowed, after all, it would leave us dozens of photos every time.