The first photograph was captured by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827. Niépce used a camera obscura to project an image of the view from his studio window onto a piece of paper coated with a photosensitive substance called bitumen of Judea. The bitumen hardened where it was exposed to light, creating a permanent image.
Niépce’s first photograph, titled “View from the Window at Le Gras,” is a black and white image of the rooftops and trees outside his studio in France. The photograph required an eight-hour exposure time to capture the image, which is why the shadows in the image are cast in different directions due to the changing position of the sun during that time. The photograph was taken with a camera obscura and a lens, but it was not until Niépce’s collaboration with Louis Daguerre that the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype, was invented in 1839.