Photography – the word derives from Greek, photos, ‘light’ and graphein, ‘to draw’.

The word was first used by scientist Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839. A method of recording images by the action of light, or related radiation, on a sensitive material. Herschel was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor and experimental photographer. He made several important contributions to photography. One being making photographs on glass, which still exists and he experimented with colour reproduction, noting that rays of different parts of the spectrum tended to impart their own colour to a photographic paper.

As always, I have learnt new things by ‘googling’ the history of photography. In its infancy, photography obviously wasn’t in colour. However it is amazing how much we still use black & white / sepia images which seem very popular. I can’t deny, I am more drawn to these type of photographs. Interestingly, they create a lot more interest on image sharing websites like Flickr than colour.

Here are some of my recent black & white / monochrome favourites. Enjoy…