You're quite right to ridicule the claim that mountain photography only began with pocket cameras. John Cleare (whom we both knew) would certainly have agreed.
Among others, there's Vittorio Sella, who apparently sometimes used 30×40 cm plates, significantly bigger even than 10x8 ins. And of course Ansel Adams, who certainly took photography into the mountains, if not to difficult summits.
I'm very aware of the Abraham Brothers, since one of my first jobs was as a porter in the art gallery at Lancaster University, and we staged an exhibition of their work, so I had ample opportunity to study the prints closely. As a novice rock climber at the time, as well as a photographer, I was very much in awe—and sometimes alarmed at the obvious lack of meaningful protection.
More recently, there are people like David Breashears, who carried an IMAX camera to the top of Everest in 1996. Today most people would think you were a bit weird if you even carried something as 'cumbersome' as a Nikon D850 on the Snowdon Horseshoe.
I'll admit to scaling down to a 35mm rangefinder (Olymous 35RC) at times on harder rock climbs, but often carried an SLR (35mm and then digital). On the Biafo—Hispar trek I had two 35mm SLR bodies, three lenses, a teleconverter, and 25 rolls of film.
Carleton Watkins was photographing Yosemite in the 1860s, climbing up to Glacier Point and other locations that even now are pretty remote to be hauling fragile plates and heavy gear.
And what images they made, in the time before photography in the mountains. Thanks for sorting it out for us Ronald. Especially interesting read on Lilly Bristow and Mary Mummery.
Worthy of comment, but absent in your article, is the fact that quite a lot the Abraham brother's photo output in the lake district were gloriously three dimensional stereos. Big plates and two lenses instead of one.
Annoyingly there's vanishingly little about such a notable fact in a general search on Google, but I posited the question to its 'brain' and it coughed-up this para' or so:
"The Abraham brothers, George and Ashley, were pioneering Lake District photographers who produced a significant collection of stereoview photos (stereoscopic slides) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based in Keswick, they were renowned for taking heavy plate cameras into precarious mountain locations to capture early rock-climbing action and dramatic landscapes."
Those stereoscopic slides, were then printed onto cards to be viewed with a stereo viewer. A magical experience, because the perception of depth was enhanced somewhat, because most victorian stereo camera lenses were set a little further apart - often 100mm - than our eyes standard 50-70mm.
It's rather tragic that mountain stereos are so very few these days, and very niche.
Often labelled as a child's toy, the Viewmaster of the the late 40s/50s, which transfixed me as a child, is still around, and I would assume there are still mountain climbing reels in its vast catalogue.
It's been awhile since I visited an Imax to see a stereo 3D film.
Just looked it up on AI again: There are several mountaineering rendered in stereo 3D Imax.
In the USA the wonderful Bierstadt brothers output was analogous to the Abrahams over here. Their stereos of Yosemite are classics of their kind.
Leica’s creator, Oscar Barnack, his last camera was a two eyed prototype stereocam' shortly before he died. It looked like an elongated UR.
Stereo photography is as old as photography itself. It’s the bedrock of many scientific disciplines. NASA’s photo vaults are overflowing with two eyed stereos of our solar system. Photogrammetry for surveying, and very much else. Aerial stereo snooping to the fore with aeroplanes and satellites, guide the gameplans of wars, irrigation, farming and I know not what else...
It’s a pity that we earthlings are so hesitant about embracing stereo vision for our entertainment. There have been so many attempts over the centuries to have us use our two eyes, to fully appreciate and enhance the world around us, to be beaten back by those moaners who say they get a headache when viewing stuff through imperfect devices. Therein it’s stereo’s achilles heel. The encumbrances of spectacles, goggles and such. Lenticular autostereosccpic screens and such have yet to prevail. And yet, the last Imax stereo film I saw was Avatar. I thought it sensational. I can imagine the latest Everest in Imax 3D even more so. The reality!!
I’d say that, for a time at least, the Abraham’s main income would’ve been stereo views of the hills thereabouts Keswick. Those stereo cards today, beaten-up, faded and curled are pricey. I’d venture to say that most all of the Abraham’s photos that we see today of the mountains, have a twin wherein the parallax is ever so slightly different. Napes Needle immediately springs to mind.The viewers are common enough, though. Seek and ye shall find.
Pardon the hasty and less than rhapsodic scribbling.
Technically speaking, most modern phones are capable of capturing stereo images – at least in terms of the hardware itself, if they have dual cameras. Apple has its new 'Spacial Photo' format too, which is in effect a kind of fancy stereo photograph that can only be viewed on Apple hardware and was originally designed for their virtual reality headsets.
I agree that it would be interesting to see a revival of stereoscopic imagery... ideally without the expensive VR gear today's implementations seem to need!
If you're adept at 'free viewing' of stereo pairs, on my old iPhone X I occasionally use an app called i3DSteroid, which covers most bases, for pictures of static objects (ideally) but if quick enough (some of the time) you can capture slow moving climbers on a HVS, say.
For getting into stereo, the internet is your friend. The oldest photo society in the world is the Stereoscopic Society, and is still extant.
Ronald, this was great – thank you! I'm sure you know this, but Mallory's Vest Pocket camera was a Kodak, not a Leica. They're both small-format cameras but that's where the similarities end; the Leica is 35mm, but the Vest Pocket Kodak takes 127 and is a much simpler camera. The early Leicas only really came to market in the 1920s, by which point pocketable folding cameras (taking a wide variety of formats) had been around for a number of years. And there was a lengthy period in which glass plates and various larger film formats coexisted in a kind of Cambrian Explosion of photographic hardware and competing standards. It was Leica and Kodak, of course, that gradually popularised the 35mm format until most of the other formats lost ground in the market. Today we're just left with 35mm, 120, 5x4 and 10x8 to all practical purposes.
Very much agreed that the large-format plate photography of the early mountain wizards was something special to behold. I've seen a few photographers take this up again in the last couple of years. Personally I think I'll stick with 35mm – bigger film formats are just too rich for me these days!
Thanks for straightening me out. I went up Great Gable with a contemporary 8x10 photographer, David Unsworth, (look him up!) And was greatly impressed by the huge weight of his gear. The tripod alone weighed 13 kg.
You're quite right to ridicule the claim that mountain photography only began with pocket cameras. John Cleare (whom we both knew) would certainly have agreed.
Among others, there's Vittorio Sella, who apparently sometimes used 30×40 cm plates, significantly bigger even than 10x8 ins. And of course Ansel Adams, who certainly took photography into the mountains, if not to difficult summits.
I'm very aware of the Abraham Brothers, since one of my first jobs was as a porter in the art gallery at Lancaster University, and we staged an exhibition of their work, so I had ample opportunity to study the prints closely. As a novice rock climber at the time, as well as a photographer, I was very much in awe—and sometimes alarmed at the obvious lack of meaningful protection.
More recently, there are people like David Breashears, who carried an IMAX camera to the top of Everest in 1996. Today most people would think you were a bit weird if you even carried something as 'cumbersome' as a Nikon D850 on the Snowdon Horseshoe.
I'll admit to scaling down to a 35mm rangefinder (Olymous 35RC) at times on harder rock climbs, but often carried an SLR (35mm and then digital). On the Biafo—Hispar trek I had two 35mm SLR bodies, three lenses, a teleconverter, and 25 rolls of film.
Carleton Watkins was photographing Yosemite in the 1860s, climbing up to Glacier Point and other locations that even now are pretty remote to be hauling fragile plates and heavy gear.
Also seen some in 1860s on Mont Blanc. But Lily Bristow and the Abrahams were hauling the stuff up actual rock faces.
And what images they made, in the time before photography in the mountains. Thanks for sorting it out for us Ronald. Especially interesting read on Lilly Bristow and Mary Mummery.
Worthy of comment, but absent in your article, is the fact that quite a lot the Abraham brother's photo output in the lake district were gloriously three dimensional stereos. Big plates and two lenses instead of one.
Annoyingly there's vanishingly little about such a notable fact in a general search on Google, but I posited the question to its 'brain' and it coughed-up this para' or so:
"The Abraham brothers, George and Ashley, were pioneering Lake District photographers who produced a significant collection of stereoview photos (stereoscopic slides) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based in Keswick, they were renowned for taking heavy plate cameras into precarious mountain locations to capture early rock-climbing action and dramatic landscapes."
Those stereoscopic slides, were then printed onto cards to be viewed with a stereo viewer. A magical experience, because the perception of depth was enhanced somewhat, because most victorian stereo camera lenses were set a little further apart - often 100mm - than our eyes standard 50-70mm.
It's rather tragic that mountain stereos are so very few these days, and very niche.
Often labelled as a child's toy, the Viewmaster of the the late 40s/50s, which transfixed me as a child, is still around, and I would assume there are still mountain climbing reels in its vast catalogue.
It's been awhile since I visited an Imax to see a stereo 3D film.
Just looked it up on AI again: There are several mountaineering rendered in stereo 3D Imax.
Interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder if they took any climbing action shots in 3D.
In the USA the wonderful Bierstadt brothers output was analogous to the Abrahams over here. Their stereos of Yosemite are classics of their kind.
Leica’s creator, Oscar Barnack, his last camera was a two eyed prototype stereocam' shortly before he died. It looked like an elongated UR.
Stereo photography is as old as photography itself. It’s the bedrock of many scientific disciplines. NASA’s photo vaults are overflowing with two eyed stereos of our solar system. Photogrammetry for surveying, and very much else. Aerial stereo snooping to the fore with aeroplanes and satellites, guide the gameplans of wars, irrigation, farming and I know not what else...
It’s a pity that we earthlings are so hesitant about embracing stereo vision for our entertainment. There have been so many attempts over the centuries to have us use our two eyes, to fully appreciate and enhance the world around us, to be beaten back by those moaners who say they get a headache when viewing stuff through imperfect devices. Therein it’s stereo’s achilles heel. The encumbrances of spectacles, goggles and such. Lenticular autostereosccpic screens and such have yet to prevail. And yet, the last Imax stereo film I saw was Avatar. I thought it sensational. I can imagine the latest Everest in Imax 3D even more so. The reality!!
I’d say that, for a time at least, the Abraham’s main income would’ve been stereo views of the hills thereabouts Keswick. Those stereo cards today, beaten-up, faded and curled are pricey. I’d venture to say that most all of the Abraham’s photos that we see today of the mountains, have a twin wherein the parallax is ever so slightly different. Napes Needle immediately springs to mind.The viewers are common enough, though. Seek and ye shall find.
Pardon the hasty and less than rhapsodic scribbling.
Technically speaking, most modern phones are capable of capturing stereo images – at least in terms of the hardware itself, if they have dual cameras. Apple has its new 'Spacial Photo' format too, which is in effect a kind of fancy stereo photograph that can only be viewed on Apple hardware and was originally designed for their virtual reality headsets.
I agree that it would be interesting to see a revival of stereoscopic imagery... ideally without the expensive VR gear today's implementations seem to need!
If you're adept at 'free viewing' of stereo pairs, on my old iPhone X I occasionally use an app called i3DSteroid, which covers most bases, for pictures of static objects (ideally) but if quick enough (some of the time) you can capture slow moving climbers on a HVS, say.
For getting into stereo, the internet is your friend. The oldest photo society in the world is the Stereoscopic Society, and is still extant.
Ronald, this was great – thank you! I'm sure you know this, but Mallory's Vest Pocket camera was a Kodak, not a Leica. They're both small-format cameras but that's where the similarities end; the Leica is 35mm, but the Vest Pocket Kodak takes 127 and is a much simpler camera. The early Leicas only really came to market in the 1920s, by which point pocketable folding cameras (taking a wide variety of formats) had been around for a number of years. And there was a lengthy period in which glass plates and various larger film formats coexisted in a kind of Cambrian Explosion of photographic hardware and competing standards. It was Leica and Kodak, of course, that gradually popularised the 35mm format until most of the other formats lost ground in the market. Today we're just left with 35mm, 120, 5x4 and 10x8 to all practical purposes.
Very much agreed that the large-format plate photography of the early mountain wizards was something special to behold. I've seen a few photographers take this up again in the last couple of years. Personally I think I'll stick with 35mm – bigger film formats are just too rich for me these days!
Thanks for straightening me out. I went up Great Gable with a contemporary 8x10 photographer, David Unsworth, (look him up!) And was greatly impressed by the huge weight of his gear. The tripod alone weighed 13 kg.