The invention of tilt and landscape photography

[Bill_1856]

Most photographic aesthetic was derived from the established techniques of painting. I think the near/far perspective may have been unique to photography (at the time).

[cjbroadbent]

Stereo views, which were widely used in the mid-1800's, required something in the foreground to have stereo effect. Some of the best American landscapes were done as survey work by an ex-stereo photographer (whose name escapes me). He always did his landscapes with an in-focus secondary subject in the foreground and a path or river leading off to hills (he knew his stuff). If his camera folded, he had tilt.

[Toyon]

In addition to the lack of tilt, do you suppose it had somethng to do with the paucity of wide-angle lenses?
I believe that most wide images were made with moving-lens Panoramic or Circuit cameras. Did the same esthetic apply to work done with this equipment?

There were plenty of wide angle lenses. Wide angle rectilinear lenses came along in the 1860's or 70's followed by WA anastigmats in the 90's.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Stereo views, which were widely used in the mid-1800's, required something in the foreground to have stereo effect. Some of the best American landscapes were done as survey work by an ex-stereo photographer (whose name escapes me). He always did his landscapes with an in-focus secondary subject in the foreground and a path or river leading off to hills (he knew his stuff). If his camera folded, he had tilt.

I've seen stereo cards by Carleton Watkins, and some of his 2-D compositions that I can think of fit this description--

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2000/...ehorn_full.htm

But in this image, I think he could do it by stopping down for the foreground and letting the background go a little soft, as it does anyway in the haze.

[Sevo]

Most photographic aesthetic was derived from the established techniques of painting. I think the near/far perspective may have been unique to photography (at the time).

Deep perspectives were the pride of painters ever since the Renaissance. And they must have been quite feasible with earliest photographic equipment, given the small apertures available back then. If they weren't popular it more likely was because it was something which painting already could do in hyperreal quality for centuries (and where photography could not compete until the current boom of digital composites), while painters could not match the level of far distance detail in photographs. A picture of a mountain with every tree and rock visible at maximum detail was new - "shepherdess with god Pan and trees in front of mountain" was not.

Sevo

[Struan Gray]

I agree that wide angle perspectives, including the effects of rise and shift, were widely explored in the West from the Renaissance onwards. See here for a couple of great examples culled from the excellent Bibliodyssey blog:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/85009674@N00/2963246947/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/85009674@N00/2961942836/

It is also true that framing a wide view with foreground interest such as various form of pastoral activity was a commonplace of painting and illustration - the western grand landscape school was in some ways reacting to this by leaving the foreground bare.

But I don't know of examples of the signature 'looming' foreground that Muench and others use from before the C20th. The C17th loved to play with perspective and projection - there are a whole class of paintings that need to be viewed in a cylindrical mirror for example - but in my casual surveys of art I haven't come across anything that matches the bulbous foregrounds of the US nature school.

It does however turn up in graphic novels and illustration much earlier in the C20th, albeit as a reference to a photojournalistic look in smaller formats, so I see the wide-wide-wide look in LF as a follow-on to the wide angle craze in 35 mm.

[cjbroadbent]

I've seen stereo cards by Carleton Watkins, and some of his 2-D compositions that I can think of fit this description--
.....

David,
It was Timothy O’Sullivan I had in mind.

[Ole Tjugen]

... By 1890 the art of glass making had advanced enough to allow construction of the Zeiss Protar f:18 (Series V), the first of the WA Anastigmats and the first major improvement over the Aplanats. That these lenses were still in production as late as the 1930's should prove how successful this design was. ...

I came to realise that it isn't completely obvious whether "these lenses" in the last sentence above refers to the Protar f:18 or the WA Aplanats. But then I checked a little more, and found that it's valid for both!

[cowanw]

H. L. Hime was a Canadian photographer who was with the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition in 1858. This is a photo of a skull in the near ground and the prairie in behind.
http://phomul.canalblog.com/images/Hime_the_prairie.JPG
Not on the web but published are quite wide angled views of Fort Garry with a long s shaped road and fence leading up to it and a View of Red River from St Andrew's Church with a distant view of the river and a remarkable timber palisade crossing from bottom right to 1/3 up on the left. The pickets are exquisitly sharp as is the distant stone fort 4 miles off. This was on collodion plates. And dark clouds in the sky!
No mention of the camera but the lens was listed as: 2 inch portrait and landscape lenses & field f X 7 1/4-
His prints were 6X8
Regards
Bill

[tgtaylor]

Here's a descripion of the camera that glass-plate collodion photographers used in California prior to the early 1860's:

"...Cameras were little more than large, tripod-mounted boxes. A smaller accordion box in front of the larger box held a lens, and the photographers adjusted focus by covering the apparatus with a black cloth, ducking underneath, and sliding the accordion box in and out to compose an image that appeared upside down on a ground glass at the back of the large box. The photographer simply removed the lens cap, basing exposure on experience and intuition..." Everyone Had Cameras: Photography and Farmworkers in California, 1850 - 2000. Page 44.

Thomas