Perceptions of the visible world were greatly altered by the invention of photography in the middle of the nineteenth century. ●In particular, and quite logically, the art of painting was forever changed, though not always in the ways one might have expected. ●The realistic and naturalistic painters of the mid- and late-nineteenth century were all intently aware of photography—as a thing to use, to learn from, and react to.Unlike most major inventions, photography had been long and impatiently awaited. ●The images produced by the camera obscura, a boxlike device that used a pinhole or lens to throw an image onto a ground-glass screen or a piece of white paper, were already familiar—the device had been much employed by topographical artists like the Italian painter Canaletto in his detailed views of the city of Venice. ●What was lacking was a way of giving such images permanent form. ●This was finally achieved by Louis Daguerre, who perfected a way of fixing them on a silvered copper plate. ●His discovery, the "daguerreotype," was announced in 1839.A second and very different process was patented by the British inventor William Henry Talbotin 1841.●Talbot's "calotype" was the first negative-to-positive process and the direct ancestor of the modern photograph. ●The calotype was revolutionary in its use of chemically treated paper in which areas hit by light became dark in tone, producing a negative image. ●This "negative," as Talbot called it, could then be used to print multiple positive images on another piece of treated paper.The two processes produced very different results. ●The daguerreotype was a unique image that reproduced what was in front of the camera lens in minute, unselective detail and could not be . ●The calotype could be made in series, and was thus the equivalent of an etching or an engraving. ●was soft edged and tonal.One of the things that most impressed the original audience for photography was the idea of . ●Nature now seemed able to speak for itself, with a minimum of interference. ●The title Talbot chose for his book, The Pencil of Nature, reflected this feeling. ●Artists were fascinated by photography because it offered a way of examining the world in much greater detail. ●They were also afraid of it, because it seemed likely to make their own efforts unnecessary.Photography did indeed make certain kinds of painting obsolete—the daguerreotype virtually did away with the portrait miniature. ●It also made the whole business of making and owning images democratic. ●Portraiture, once a luxury for the privileged few, was suddenly well within the reach of many more people.In the long term, photography's impact on the visual arts was far from simple. ●. ●Even those artists who were most dependent on photography became to admit that they made use of it, in case this compromised their professional standing.The rapid technical development of photography—the introduction of lighter and simpler equipment, and of new emulsions that coated photographic plates, film, and paper and enabled images to be made at much faster speeds—had some consequences. ●Scientific experiments made by photographers such as Eadweard Muybridgeand Etienne-Jules Mareydemonstrated that the movements of both humans and animals differed widely from the way they had been traditionally represented in art. ●Artists, often reluctantly, were forced to accept the evidence provided by the camera. ●The new candid photography—unposed pictures that were made when the subjects were unaware that their pictures were being taken—confirmed these scientific results, and at the same time, thanks to the radical croppingof images that the camera often imposed, suggested new compositional formats. ●The effects obtained by candid photographers were soon being copied by artists such as the French painter Degas.