Essays

About a century ago, photography was invented. In those early days, only simple box-cameras were available to take simple black and white pictures. Photographic techniques and equipment’s have come a long way since then. Exploding flash guns have progressed to compact electronic flash unit. box-cameras to sophisticated computerized reflex cameras, stills to movies, black-and-white to full glorious colours and part-time dabblers to highly paid professionals.

In almost every sphere of human activity nowadays, photography has now come to play a very significant role.

Photography as a hobby is perhaps the most popular of all its uses. Cameras and films are now cheap and easy to use. 'Instamatic' cameras have largely eliminated the hit-or-miss techniques of yesteryears. Anybody with a pair of eyes and hands can take reasonably good pictures. We see amateur photographers all over the place, especially in holiday resorts and recreational areas. Tourist and sightseers are never without cameras. Pictures and snapshots of important events are treasured possessions. Who would have looked at old favourite photographs and not recalled back memories of days gone by? Wonderful times and places are all recorded in photographs, no matter how faded they are. They are our link to the past.

Newspapers and magazines would never be what they are today without photography. Photographs enliven these periodicals with pictures of people and places. 'A picture is worth a thousand words", so goes the old saying. A well-clicked photograph is worth more than a thousand words. It describes a scene infinitely better than mere words can depict.

Besides making newspapers and magazines attractive, photography provides jobs to numerous professionals who roam around the world in search of pictures.  Modern printing processes make extensive use of photographic techniques. Off-set printing and photocopying are examples of what photography is doing for us. Such is the versatility of photography. All the books and magazines are now made by photographic processes.

In an another field of human activity—medicine—photography is extensively used. X-ray photography is now a common thing in hospitals. They help doctors in diagnosis of diseases. In addition, X-rays may be used in treatment of certain diseases. Nowadays, with the invention of fibre-optics, where light can be directed through thin tubes, doctors can see and probe into the insides of patients as never before. They can then photograph all they see in full colour. Such techniques were unheard of just a decade or so ago.

Photography is also employed in meteorology. Weather forecasting by satellites is now a routine thing. It is also accurate.

Pictures of other planets and celestial objects are always wonderful to look at. Space probes approaching the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn have taken sharp and clear pictures for us to unravel the mysteries of universe on earth. How beautiful and majestic they look! All these are made possible by the wonders of photography.                                      

Photography provides us with sights of deep-sea sharks, microscopic bacteria, constellations-a million light years away, ravishing beauties and our passport pictures. Its use is wide and varied and of tremendous importance to us. What better way, than photography, if a dentist has to see the inside of a tooth? What can be a better thing then old photographs when we sit down and reminisce once in while?