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[Piwayac - Vernal Fall - 300 ft. Yo Semite]

Creator

American Photographer · 1829–1916

AmbrotypistPublisherArtist

At twenty, Carleton Watkins headed out to California to make his fortune. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins's photographs,

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Date: 1861
Medium: Albumen silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

Watkins returned to Yosemite in 1861 and positioned his mammoth-plate camera at some of the same locations he visited in 1858-59. He refined this composition by moving closer to Vernal Fall, his tripod seemingly amid the flowing water. The passage of time was evident at the fall by the condition of the leaning pine tree at left of center. Here the pine tree is alive, its branches covered with needles, thus establishing its condition in 1861. As time passed, the tree died, thus providing a benchmark for dating later pictures.

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