Originally Posted by
tgtaylor
This book is a great read! To supplement it I ordered Carleton Watkins:The Complete Mammoth Photographs and a better quality 100mm 5x magnifying glass from Amazon to better view the reproductions which are excellent.
According to Green, Watkins printed the negatives from his first trip to Yosemite in January, 1862 during "...the worst weather that San Francisco had seen in its fourteen American years. It rained, sometimes two and three inches a day. It was cold, so cold that snow turned Mount Diablo...bright white." "There is a great flood in the interior {of the state]" Thomas Starr King wrote to a friend in New York, "California is a lake. Rats, squirrels, locusts...and other pests are drowned out..." So it would appear that Watkins printed under cloud cover which requires a longer exposure time but allows for the greater definition that Watkin's prints exhibit.
Thomas
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