Dorothy Catherine Draper (6 August 1807–10 December 1901) was an artist, educator and chemist notable for being the subject of the earliest existent daguerreotype portrait made in the United States. Copy of a photograph of Dorothy Catherine Draper taken by John William Draper c. 1840.

Niépce is credited with making the oldest surviving photograph — "View from a window at Le Gras" in 1826. He used the same camera obscura and bitumen-coated plate. Niépce captured the view from the window at his estate in Le Gras, France.

Early 19th-century pioneers Sarah Anne Bright (1793–1866) produces what is possibly the earliest surviving photographic image taken by a woman. Constance Fox Talbot (1811–1880), wife of the inventor Henry Fox Talbot, experiments with the process of photography, possibly becoming the first woman to take a photograph.

The first color photograph was created in the year 1861. The perception of all colors in an image could be created with a several-step process of taking multiple images through three colored glass plates, invented by physicist James Clerk Maxwell.