SNAPSHOT

 

The origins of this word were highlighted in a recent article “Just Press the Button, we do the rest” in C-41 magazine. The term is most associated with George Eastman, a bank teller with an interest in photography. Eastman went on to invent paper film, establish Kodak and launch the Brownie Box Camera in 1888. It came with a roll of 100 film paper, no viewfinder and simple operation. Eastman promoted the camera as one for the masses, free of the formalness and perfection of salon photography. A true point and shoot camera. He needed a nickname for all this and found it in a term, “Snapshot,” coined by a famous hunter Sir John Herschel. He used it to describe a riffle shot taken without aim to capture a quick moving target. Perhaps I found this article most interesting since it describes my too frequent pushing of the shutter and often imperfect results. So just call me a “snap-shooter,” but at least one with some history behind me.