Eadweard Muybridge: Ingenious Landscape Photographer

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is best known for his pioneering work on motion studies and moving image projection. Further to such remarkable achievement, Muybridge also produced amazing landscape photographs using many ingenious techniques. When Muybridge returned to San Francisco in 1866 following his recuperation from the stagecoach accident, he became a professional photographer and called his mobile studio, consisting of a horse-drawn vehicle containing his equipment, ‘Helios’ (Sun in Greek mythology).

Muybridge also photographed the newly built transcontinental railroad, as well as urban and rural scenes in Panama and Guatemala, capturing coffee plantations, ruins and new buildings.

In 1869, Muybridge invented a camera device ‘sky shade’ which allowed him to take various exposures on a single plate so the sky wouldn’t look overexposed. Also, Muybridge superimposed a separate images of clouds and the moon onto his photographs, similar to modern-day image editing software, in order to achieve more dramatic images.

One of the Muybridge’s most famous landscape photographs is a panoramic view of San Francisco. In 1878, he took 13 photographs side by side and produced an over 17 foot-long photograph which showed a 360 degree view of the city in great detail. Each photograph was printed onto albumen paper from a mammoth (24x20 inch) wet collodion glass plate negative. It was a remarkable achievement which demonstrates Muybridge’s advanced technical ability.