The Scoop MAY 2017 | Page 35

*Click, Click, Click*

May is National Photograph Month. The reason for photograph month is to celebrate the means of communication in the past and the future. Although there are no information on how the day was invented or created, people celebrate it by looking through pictures that were taken and to think back to the pictures. There are famous pictures that date back all the way to 1827. Back in the old days, photographs took a long time to produce because of the exposure for the picture to get ready. This is why pictures from the Victorian Era feature people with stern expressions, because those expressions were easy for the subject to hold. As the camera technology progressed and got better, film was produced. It was faster, but still took time to produce. Film images usually take about 13 steps to produce because of the different materials that are used. With film images, there are options for colors such as black and white and full color.

One picture is named “Rising Flag at Iwo Jima,” taken during World War II. The picture showed the marines rising the second flag at Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was one the most bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history. Of all the 70,000 marine soldiers that arrived on the island, about 6,281 died and around 19,217 soldiers were wounded. The main reason this picture sticks out was because of the how hard-fought this battle was.

Another famous picture is “Fat Man Explodes.” The Fat Man was one of the two nuclear bombs that were dropped on one of the Japanese islands. The Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The picture was taken for US government to show the damage of the bomb done to citizens of Nagasaki. It was detonated from about 1,800 feet. The Fat Man flattened out the city, killed 39,000 people, and injured 25,000 citizens. The rest of the citizens died from wounds and from the lack of oxygen.

Henry Xie