Color photography got its start from an unusually bland source: Potatoes. The first attempts at color photography date all the way back to 1861, but while the very first color photograph sparked an interest in capturing color, it wasn’t until the early 1900s that an easily repeatable, beginner-friendly form of color photography would emerge – and from a basic vegetable no less.
In 1861, the color-obsessed researcher James Clerk Maxwell proved that mixing red, green and blue light would allow the human eye to see a full color photograph. But early attempts to capture color in photographs were complex and impractical.
