The Bridal Veil Falls, 900 feet, Yosemite, California

Like William Henry Jackson and Ansel Adams, Watkins is best known for his landscape photographs of the American West, particularly those of what became Yosemite National Park. In 1861 and on seven subsequent trips to Yosemite, Watkins brought a custom-made camera that was capable of exposing eighteen-by-twenty-two-inch glass plates. The arduous task of sensitizing and processing these unwieldy plates in the field was offset by the plates’ capacity to capture the vastness and grandeur of Yosemite in exceptional detail. These mammoth-scale prints, along with hundreds of stereo views that he made during each trip to Yosemite, were sent to the East Coast and helped influence the U.S. Congress to pass, and Abraham Lincoln to sign, legislation protecting Yosemite Valley in 1864. This later view of Bridal Veil Falls was taken from the valley floor looking up at the massive, sheer-faced Cathedral Rock and its delicate falls. Adams as well as Watkins made dozens of photographs of the falls, Cathedral Rock, and the valley beyond.