A photograph is an image created by capturing light with a camera. When you take a photograph, light bounces off whatever you're pointing at (a person, a landscape, your pet) and enters the camera, where it gets recorded either on special light-sensitive film or by a digital sensor. The result is a permanent picture that freezes a moment in time.

Photographs let us remember important events, share experiences with others, and see places we've never been. A family photograph on the wall might show your grandparents as young people, giving you a window into the past. News photographs help us understand events happening around the world. Scientists use photographs to study everything from distant galaxies to tiny cells invisible to our eyes.

Before photography was invented in the 1800s, the only way to capture someone's likeness was through painting or drawing, which took hours or days. The first photograph ever taken required eight hours of exposure time. Modern cameras can capture a sharp photograph in a tiny fraction of a second.

People often shorten photograph to “photo” in casual conversation, and the person taking the picture might be called a photographer. As a verb, photograph means to take a picture of someone or something.