First Photograph On A Camera
This image may not look like much, but this is the world’s oldest photo, shot in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niépce outside a window of his estate at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France. How did he capture this blurry beauty? Niépce used a pewter plate covered with a mixture that included bitumen and water. Then he put the plate inside a camera and over a period of many hours (perhaps two days) the light hardened some of the bitumen on the plate that was in view of architectural features such as buildings.
The unhardened parts were then washed away to produce this image. If you look closely you can see faint outlines of where a building or architectural feature is. This photography technique was called “heliographic” by Niépce and was the first image ever captured.