Watch the history of photography explained by puppets
Making pictures used to take a really long time.
Glove and Boots, a puppet based video blog, has released an entertaining video covering the “terrible” history of photography. Why so terrible? Well, as Fafa the groundhog explains to his red hairy friend Mario, taking a picture just used to take a whole lot longer than it does now.
The video kicks off with Mario complaining about how long it takes him to get from taking a photo, to looking at it on his camera roll, to sharing it with the world. Fafa uses his friend’s griping to jump into an explanation about just how long pre-smartphone photography might have taken.
If you are a true photo nerd you might cringe at the way that some of the details they gloss over. Stop shaking that Polaroid Gorilla! It’s better to hide it somewhere dark and wait patiently for it to develop. Shooting 35mm film? Why wouldn’t you opt for a roll with 36 exposures instead of a measly 24 frames? Or Gorilla just straight up forgetting his dark cloth when he goes to make a portrait with the large format camera from the 1800s.
A few years back Glove and Boots put together a fun explainer about the terror of vertical video. Although the social media landscape has changed since the video was released in 2012—the majority of apps now encourage you to shoot vertically—it’s still worth a watch, especially if you can remember the days before Instagram stories.
