Eastman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who specializes in photography or film production, often involved in capturing and developing images
2. Someone skilled in the techniques and artistry of creating photographic or cinematic works, primarily in film or still imagery
3. An individual engaged in the photographic arts, typically focused on processes from image capture through print-making and presentation

Etymology: George Eastman was an American inventor who made photography affordable for ordinary people. In Rochester, New York, he manufactured dry plates, then flexible roll film, and sold cameras that customers returned with their exposed film for processing. His company, first the Eastman Dry Plate Company and later Kodak, sold film stock widely enough that his surname became attached to the product itself. Film-makers in the early cinema used Eastman-branded stock, so the name came to stand for motion-picture film. The noun's sense of a skilled photographer or cinematographer grows from that connection to film, rather than from any separate coinage. The name is a surname first, and its meaning in photography and cinema follows from the work of the man who carried it.