BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 493

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IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST493 – PASSAGE – 2

IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 493

READING PASSAGE – 2

The Development of Photography

The British aristocrat William Henry Fox Talbot is an important figure in the history of photography. He is remembered today for his discovery in 1839 of the negative-positive process, inspired by the camera obscura, an ancient device used for amusement and as a drawing aid by artists.

The name camera obscura can be translated from Latin to mean ‘dark room’; though this device is not the dark room process some readers may be able to recall as being used in photography production. Camera obscura is a device which makes use of a very dark room or object which the eyes look into, which contains a very small hole which the viewer looks through, into a very bright object. Through this process, objects seen scatter and reform by the law of optics, and the object appears upside-down to the viewer.

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Henry Fox Talbot’s desire to create a mechanism to photograph scenes and objects began during a visit to Lake Como in Italy, where he became frustrated with his inaccurate attempts to sketch the scene. Talbot discovered that, while exposing photographic paper to a very short light exposure would not immediately show an image, the image was there nevertheless. Talbot found that this image could be developed into a negative, and then fixed (in order to prevent further development) with the use of chemicals. From here, Talbot-found that by repeating the process of developing the photograph into a negative, would allow him to print numerous positive photographs from the negative sample.

Though today, most people think only of Talbot when considering the birth of photography, what is less well known is that there were a number of photographic processes developed by different people in the first half of the 19th century, each competing with Talbot’s. It is now widely accepted that the first photograph was created, not by Talbot, but by a French inventor named Nicéphore Niépce, of the view outside his window in the late 1820s.

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Niépce had been developing a new way to copy.engravings, but he soon realised the possibilities that light sensitive printing could hold in its own right. Unfortunately he died in 1833, leaving his younger partner Louis Daguerre to continue his work. It was in fact Daguerre, rather than Talbot, who created the first commercially successful form of photography, named the ‘daguerreotype’. This method, which used a camera to create a unique, one-off image on a thin sheet of metal, caused a storm of publicity in France and made Daguerre into a wealthy celebrity. The daguerreotype was reliable and relatively cheap to produce, and by 1850 it was the most widespread form of photography, found all across the globe.

Talbot, on the other hand, found it much more difficult to profit from his invention in its early years. At first it seemed as though his negative-positive method, also known as the ‘calotype’, was superior to Daguerre’s, because instead of creating a single image, it produced a paper negative from which unlimited positive copies could be made.

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But Talbot was unable to bring his own invention up to the technical quality of his main rival- while daguerreotypes never faded, calotype pictures were known to lose their definition very quickly. In 1846, for example, Talbot arranged for over 7000 of his photographs to be distributed with a popular arts magazine, only for almost every single print to go completely blank, causing huge public embarrassment for Talbot, along with financial difficulties.

However, by the 1870s daguerreotypes had fallen out of favour, as a number of younger inventors refined Talbot’s method, making it easier, cheaper and more reliable. As daguerreotypes sank into obscurity, the principles established by Talbot became the standard, making photography a medium uniquely suited to mass distribution and driving its use throughout the 20th century, right up until the digital era.

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Questions 15-18

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

15 What inspired William Henry Fox Talbot’s photographic discovery?

16 How do images appear when observed through a camera obscura?

17 Describe William Henry Fox Talbot’s illustrations.

18 How many photographs could be produced from a single negative using Talbot’s negative-positive process?

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Questions 19-26

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Aside from Talbot’s discovery, there were many other 19…………..created in the 1800s. Nicéphore Niépce may not be very well known, but it is generally believed that he produced the 20………….. photograph. Niépce had originally been interested in making copies of engravings, which led him to discover the ability to use light sensitive printing. After his death, his work was taken up by his partner, who provided a 21………… fruitful method of producing photographs prior to Talbot’s discovery.

Niépce’s partner named this method the 22…………… This form of photography was inexpensive to produce, as well as being 23………….. Unfortunately, Talbot’s negative-positive process, or 24………….. was not as successful. The quality of photographs produced by Talbot’s method was not as good as the rival method, though it was 25………… in it’s ability to produce multiple copies from one negative. Eventually, helped along by the improvements made by other inventors in the field, Talbot’s method became the 26………… in the development of photographs, on which has only recently fallen out of usage.

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