The word 照相 is formed by combining two characters that conceptually describe the action of creating a portrait through light. The first character, 照 (zhào), means "to shine" or "to illuminate", while the second, 相 (xiàng), means "appearance" or "likeness". Together, they create a vivid, almost mechanical picture of the fundamental process of photography: the act of shining light (照) upon a subject to capture its visual likeness or image (相). This formation directly mirrors the original technology of the camera, which uses light to fix an appearance onto a surface.