Photographic Techniques

Contact prints

Making photographic prints by placing a negative in contact with sensitized paper and printing, giving an image the same size as the negative.

Negative prints

Photographic prints in which tones or colors are the opposite of their normal values.

Photograms

Photographs produced without a camera, usually by placing an object directly on sensitized paper and exposing it to light.

Microphotographs

Photographic images at very small scales of reproduction. One may need a microscope to view the photograph.

Photomicrographs

Photographic images of objects at high magnification, taken with a microscope. (For example, images of cells.)

Photocollages

The technique of making compositions in two dimensions or very low relief by gluing photographs onto a flat surface. Drawing, painting, printing, or other two-dimensional objects may also be added.

Photomontages

Photographic prints made by re-photographing a collage or montage of two or more photographic prints or pieces of photographic prints to which drawing, painting, printing, or other two-dimensional objects may be added.

Composite photographs

Photographic prints in which two or more negatives are printed as one unified image.

Hand-colored photographs

Also called "hand-tinted." Photographs to which color has been added manually.

Manipulated photographs

Photographs that have been altered through interference in the optical or chemical procedures, or physically altered, as for example, sewn, marked on, or torn.

Pinhole camera photographs

Photographs taken through a camera in which a pinpoint aperture has been used in place of a traditional lens.

Solarization photographs

Photographs in which negative and positive values have been reversed in some areas, usually as a result of a long exposure or light interference during processing.

Stereographs

Also called "stereoviews," "stereograms," "stereoscopic views," or "stereos." Two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually viewed with a stereoscope. Typically, these are photographic prints are on card mounts, but they may also be daguerreotypes, glass negatives, glass transparencies, or other processes. (1)