We love photography and so do lots of other people, so it is not surprising that there are several impressive and hidden facts about the activity. Here is a selection of some of the most interesting photographic facts:
1. Facebook has, on average, over 250 million photographs uploaded every day! That’s an incredible amount of worldwide social activity.
With over 1 in every 13 people on the face of the planet on Facebook and uploading their photos, it really is mind-boggling to consider the amount of photography that is shared through this platform. The busiest time for uploading of photos on to Facebook was New Year weekend 2014-2015 when 750 million photos were uploaded over that time period. We are betting that you were one of them!
2. The first colour photograph was produced in 1861 by James Clerk Maxwell. The Scotsman patriotically photographed a tartan ribbon. You can see the photographic plates he used to discover colour photography at his house in India Street, Edinburgh.
3. The Guinness Book of World Records
states that the largest entry into a photography competition was from Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland. The entry totalled 168,208 images into the Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 competition.
4. It is thought that we now take as many photographs per two minutes as were taken in the whole nineteenth century!
5. Niépce, the inventor of photography was better known during his lifetime, for his invention of a propeller for boats.
6. The most expensive cameras
to ever be sold was auctioned in Vienna and was a 1923 Leica camera. The piece was sold for $2.8 million.
7. The largest seamless photo measures 32 feet high and 11 feet wide. The image is of a control tower and runways at the US Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California.
8. The largest collection of cameras held by one person is 4,425. The collection belongs to Dilesh Parekh who lives in Mumbai, India. Parekh has amassed the impressive collection since he began the hobby in 1977.
9. Every heard someone saying they have a good side of their face for photographs? There could be a good reason for this. A university study revealed that it is widely believed that the left-side is the preferred photo side for most people. It has been suggested that this is because the left side of a person’s face shows the most emotion.
10. The Telegraph reported that a recent survey suggested that British people took up to 76 percent of their photographs whilst drunk! We think mobile phones might be to blame for this trend.
11. To allow for additional weight to be transported back after the moon landings (the astronauts brought home moon rock samples), 12 Hasselblad cameras were left on the moon’s surface.
12. The highest price paid for a photograph was for Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II. The image was sold for $4,338,500 in 2011 at Christie’s, New York.
13. The first photos taken from space were of earth in 1946. The images were taken by rocket-enabled cameras.
14. The first attempts at war photography were made by the Bengal Army surgeon, John McCosh during the Second Sikh War. The images taken during the period 1848-1849 included soldiers from the British Army.
15. The first British newspaper to print a photograph was the Daily Graphic in 1891.
Learn more about photography with one of IOP’s online photography courses here.
