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no light, and introduces light where required. The early
practice of starting off with diffuse even lighting and
removing light where it was not needed arguably yielded
a much more natural effect.
It had its drawbacks, however. The more the pho-
tographers used baffl es and shutters to create special
visual effects, the longer the exposure times became.
Julia Margaret Cameron’s sitters frequently complained
about exposures running into several minutes as the great
portraitist sought to create dramatic effect.
Many early studios were built on the roofs of tall
buildings, ensuring even and consistent lighting. Ac-
cording to a newspaper report in the Glasgow Herald
in 1843, the location of the studio was to ensure that
‘the light of day which acts to him [the photographer]
the part of a pencil, may have free and uninterrupted
access.’ But, of course, in cities, that high position sur-
rounded by chimneys brought with it soot and smog
from coal-burning fi res.
Before the end of the 1840s, converting the upper
fl oor of a building to give good window space—fac-
ing north if possible—and a large skylight, offered the
ideal combination of top and side or front light. Those
walls not replaced with glass were painted white or
light blue, to ensure the highest actinic value of the
refl ected light.
In 1849, Henry Hunt Snelling writing in his book The
History and Practice of the Art of Photography (New
York: G. P. Putnam) noted
In choosing your operating room, obtain one with a north-
western aspect, if possible; and either with, or capable
of having attached, a large sky-light. Good pictures may
be taken without the sky-light, but not the most pleasing
or effective.
That advice was echoed in manuals throughout the
1850s. Keeping the glass clean, however, posed a con-
siderable challenge. Dirty glass, polluted by smoke not
only increased exposure times by acting as a fi lter, but
also radically altered the actinic value of the light. The
blue content of the daylight to which the daguerreotype
and wet collodion processes were sensitive was con-
siderably reduced by having to penetrate the yellow tar
stain which smoke and rain overlaid on to the roof glass.
Writing in his 1868 Manual of Photographic Manipula-
tion, William Lake Price observed that
Thus the light cast on the sitter traverses a villanous
compound of concentrated coal smoke and the victim,
impaled on the head rest, is made to suffer double the
requisite amount of “exposure.”
To alleviate this suffering, he outlined an ingenious
and semi-automatic system of pipes and pumps for
washing and cleaning the skylight. An added bonus
of this system, he noted, was the cooling effect on the
studio itself by the periodic fl ushing of the roof with
cold water during hot days.
The head clamp remained a part of studio portraiture
into the 1870s, with a wide variety of devices being in-
vented and marketed. Some were free-standing on heavy
cast-iron bases, whilst others were built into chairs. All
were designed to reduce the instances of a portrait being
ruined by the subject inadvertently moving his or her
head during exposure.
The idea of painted studio backgrounds was fi rst
mentioned in Antoine Claudet’s 1841 British patent No.
9193 ‘Daguerreotypes’ although there is no evidence
that his rights to such an ‘invention’ were ever upheld
in any court of law. In his patent he stated that
When the daguerreotype process was originally applied to
portrait taking it was necessary to place behind the sitter
some plain background or neutral tints in order that the
outlines of the fi gures should be delineated and brought
out. I have now improved this by applying behind the
sitter some backgrounds of painted scenery representing
landscapes, interiors of apartments, and other represen-
tations adapted to the taste and habits of the sitter or to
his profession.
The studio portrait was further embellished by
the balustrades, potted plants and other ephemera
which continued to be used throughout the carte-de-
visite and cabinet portrait eras. The earliest known
daguerreotype of a photographer at work (in the col-
lection of the National Museum of Photography Film
and Television, Bradford, UK)—showing Jabez Hogg
making a daguerreotype portrait of William Johnson
in 1843—depicts a curtained window-frame with trees
beyond, ornate trellis work, a classical sculpture, stools
and chairs, and a caged bird above the camera (watch
the birdie).
With pitched glass roofs, the photographic studio was
much prone to leakage, and manuals and journals offered
wide ranging advice on how to render the ‘operating
room’ watertight. Ingenious seals were suggested—the
most elaborate being the ‘Philadelphia Sash’ which, it
was claimed, guaranteed that any leakage would be car-
ried away by internal drainage ducts. The dual problems
of waterproofi ng, and of minimising the impact of fram-
ing bars which might cast soft uneven shadows, brought
suggestions that the thick plate glass be cut in such a way
that each sheet slotted into a groove on the next.
As photographers became more concerned with the
creative exploitation of light, a number of major fi gures
started to break away from the tradition of using north
light. Signifi cant amongst these were O. J Rejlander,
and Valentine Blanchard whose south-facing studio in
London’s Camden Town (1866) used a series of movable
opaque screens to diffuse and refl ect the lighting. This
approach permitted much greater variety of contrast