Among the Treetops, Calaveras Grove

In a letter to a friend, Carlton Watkins expressed feelings of pride about the landscape images he took following his 1876 lawsuit and subsequent bankruptcy: "Everybody says [the new photographs] are better, softer, more artistic, etc." After twenty years as a photographer, his mature aesthetic and technical skills seem to have provided Watkins with a sense of confidence, encouraging more experimental approaches to his work. Although the visual concept expressed in this image seems commonplace today, viewpoints such as this did not become popular until after 1900. Watkins had to place his 18 x 22-inch camera on its back to achieve this study of treetops reaching up to the heavens.