How far has photography travelled since its beginning, when all clicks were merely black and white? We have all become so casual about taking coloured clicks in today’s time; we take everything around with full colours using our phone, clicking it at a single tap. But ever wonder when exactly colour photography came into existence? It was a long night of experiments, many failures, and some fantastic breaks before we got to see colour images the way our eyes perceived the world around us. From curiosity and tenacity to the brilliance of human ingenuity, this tale of colour photography is so enthralling that it keeps driving one’s soul to think for more.

Capturing Colour and Early Attempts

Even before we had true colour photography, people were trying to bring life to their pictures. Hand-coloured paintings and dyeing of black-and-white photographs were some of the first attempts by artists at capturing images in the early days of photography. That gave an illusion of colour, but it was not natural at all, and it required incredibly skilled hands. People wanted to capture colour directly from nature instead of relying on artificial colouring.

The first effort to capture colours was in the 19th century. Well, photography was still a wee baby back then in 1839, and yet there were a few inventors and scientists who ventured to try recording colours as they would appear. Of course, that is the first big challenge-that of how light reacts with colours. Scientists did know that white light contained all colours but did not know how they were separated; neither did they know how to do that, and therefore, it remained unsolved for decades.

James Clerk Maxwell and the First Colour Photograph

The first breakthrough in the history of colour photography came when Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell unveiled the first colour photograph in 1861. He took three photographs of the same object using red, green, and blue filters in a process called the three-colour process. These images, when projected together, make a coloured image. This experiment demonstrated that colour could be captured using the primary colours of light but was tricky and not practical to use in everyday life.

Although Maxwell’s method was revolutionary, it was not a technique of colour photography that really worked at that time. The material that existed then was too insensitive to capture all colours as required. Although his theory is correct, a photographer needs to have a much more practical approach to taking a colour picture.

The Lumiere Brothers and Autochrome

It was in 1907 that Auguste and Louis Lumiere of France discovered the autochrome process. These were the first commercially viable colour photography methods. The Lumière brothers had already become quite famous in their early cinema works. Thus, they made a very crucial contribution to photography.

They used these tiny grain potato starch-coloured red, green, and blue. The tiniest of grains used resulted in the use of light with the ability to pass through an image in coloured spread over the glass plate; it came out as a fine, natural photograph in colour when taken out. It was not as complicated as Maxwell’s technique and allowed photographs to be achieved in colour rather than using their complex projections.

Autochrome was quite revolutionary, yet not without some drawbacks. Photos taken with the colour process did not come out to be nearly as sharp as the black and whites, nor were they too bright so that catching moving subjects in a snapshot would be next to impossible. Nonetheless, this marked the beginning of something people would never witness in their lives, not hand-painted colour photographs.

Kodachrome and Colour Photography

Technologically advanced, this film allowed colour photography to become possible, launched in the 1930s by Kodak, it is known as Kodachrome. This meant photographers could shoot richer and more vibrant photographs in colours that were unavailable on Autochrome because it utilised coloured particles at very small sizes, but Kodachrome used many layers of film. Each film was sensitive to colours meant that reliability and practicability had improved for the photographers.

Kodachrome became a darling quickly in the minds of professionals and non-professional photographers who would practise photography. Highly put to use for anything and everything under the sun in a click of a click, like a family portrait or what a beautiful marvellous land view fact is that many colour historical incidents connected to this moment, many incidents were made to record on that basis during the 20th century-available in such detailed forms with everyone. Now colour of black was given red, which led to many interesting events occurring like:

Colour Photography in Transition

Colour photography is now accessible to everyone in the 1960s and 1970s due to the new film technology developed. Even though colour films are much better, there are films from Kodak, Fujifilm, and Agfa at affordable prices in plenty. And so black and white recedes into the background and pictures are made predominantly in colour.

This was taken to another level when Polaroid introduces instant colour film in the 1970s. Instant photography made photography interesting and close to real-time. Suddenly, people are able to shake up their pictures to see colours develop right before their eyes. The thrill is exciting and has made the photography experience even more interesting and enjoyable to have.

Digital Revolution and Colour Photography Today

Although film photography dominated most of the 20th century, the late 1990s and early 2000s represented a large shift with the emergence of digital cameras. Digital photography altogether eradicated the use of film. Digital cameras could avoid using chemical processes to capture images; using electronic sensors, photographers could immediately see their images, delete bad ones, and edit pictures easily.

Today, almost everything we use is equipped with a camera that can capture colour photographs: DSLRs in the professional leagues, DSLRs for the pros, and smartphones to capture on a whim. It’s certainly been one hell of a journey from the first colour experiment of Maxwell up to the world of digital. We now live in an easy world to capture colour and are just a click away from sharing our colourful memories with the world.

The World is a Colour Frame

Colour photography was not overnight but a long, interesting journey. From hand-coloured prints to Maxwell’s scientific breakthrough, from the fragile beauty of Autochrome to the rise of Kodachrome, and finally, to the digital revolution, every step brought us closer to the colourful world we photograph today.

It is just fabulous to think about all the advancement that photography went through and, now carrying into all the modern technology brought up to its play. Next time you take this colour picture, have a minute in mind about what we all have experienced long treks behind this wonderful everyday that would give us such scientists/inventors at very first but later on capture more and let us see about ourselves in such a fantastic, wonderfully colourful world around us.