Down the Valley, Yosemite

In this view of the Yosemite Valley, Carleton Watkins masked the finished print into a circle as a means of conveying a deeper feeling of perspective. "More of an artist than a businessman," Watkins lost most of the negatives he had created over a twenty-year period to a competitor after a lawsuit in the mid-1860s. Bankrupt, he eased his pain and replenished his stock by spending most of the summer of 1878 in Yosemite. The images he made during that trip were smaller in format than the previous ones and often made with a wide-angle lens.