The importance of photos
Never before has taking photographs, capturing moments to make them infinite, become more important than in recent years.
An act as natural as picking up the phone and taking a photo, making a video is part of our everyday life.
So much so, that when the space on our phone becomes insufficient, the first thought is to immediately delete photos that we don’t need.
Photographing to document, photographing to remember, photographing to immortalise moments.
The great ability of photography is to make a second eternal, to relive it days, weeks and years later. It is a true art that does not stop at the mechanical act of clicking. Over the years, this art has been perfected, enriched with light and shade, and on 19 August we officially celebrate World Photography Day.
History of World Photography Day
World Photography Day was officially established on 19 August 2010 by Australian photographer Korske Ara. The date was not chosen at random: in 1839, the physicist François Arago presented the daguerreotype, the first photographic process for developing images, to the Academy of Sciences and Visual Arts in Paris.
This process was developed by Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre and provided a single, non-reproducible positive copy on a silver or silver-plated copper support sensitised in a darkroom by exposure to iodine vapour.
There are many contests around this date, but among the most important is the Earth Photo Contest.
Earth Photo Contest
The Earth Photo Contest brings together photographers and videographers from all over the world to compete in five categories: People, Places, Nature, Changing Forests and A Changing Climate.
An expert jury selected the final 55 photos and videos from 36 artists with very different themes.
Rosie Hallam won the Earth Photo Contest 2021 with the triptych A right to an education, which describes the evolution of an Ethiopian family through education.
The photographer stated that:
Education “is fundamental to development and helps lay the foundations for social welfare, economic growth and security, equality and peace”
Edward Bateman won the Place category for an image of Yosemite’s Half Dome. COVID restrictions made travel to the national park impossible, so the photographer recreated this scene on his kitchen table with a 3D printed landscape and a small smoke machine.
