The birth of photography dates back to the very early stages of its development, in 1565 it was discovered that some silver salts turned black when they were opened to an element, which at that time was believed to be air . It was only in the mid-1720s that they discovered that it was actually light that reacted with the salts causing them to turn black; this has led to numerous unsuccessful attempts at capturing images in a long-lasting photochemical form. Many scientists, amateur inventors, and artists passionately pursued the development of this form throughout the 29th century. A French scientist, Joseph Niepce, was the man who made this process a success. He made an eight-hour exposure of what is believed to be his backyard outside his home and created the first paper negative in 1816. It took another three years before a fixing agent for this process was discovered and the term "photography" was born . Hundreds of years passed before photography reached this stage, but over the next 80 years the progress in photography was dramatic. Different techniques were tried and tested, but the most common was the black and white method, which dates back to the birth of photography. “In this 'gelatin silver' technique, a sheet of paper is coated with a mixture of white pigment and gelatin, then with a solution of gelatin and silver salts. It is exposed to light through a negative and developed in a chemical solution. (Wheeler, 2002, p.9)There are many achievements and advances in photography that are very important to its history, including; light mixing tests conducted by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1861 and the development of color photography by George Eastman, founder of Kodak and the sharp rise of photojournalism in... middle of paper... ...l The image was altered. (Fig. 6) was widely circulated via email in 2001, the photograph shows a great white shark jumping out of the water to bite a soldier, however like the previous photo this one also turned out to be fake. These examples show similarities to the pre-digital era where photographers had no interest in documenting reality, but now it is both amateurs and professionals, who take a documentary photograph and manipulate it to evoke fantasies or imaginary scenes. Unlike pre-digital, photojournalism has developed and manipulation in this area is no longer tolerable, and it is the general public who decides this, people seek truth in photography, but trying to separate truth from fabrication is difficult and pranksters and even journalists prove that, again and again, we cannot believe everything we see.