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jects, including waterfalls, moving carriages, speeding
trains, rising smoke and fl ames, fl ying birds, fl apping
fl ags, and galloping horses. Portraits were said to be
instantaneous when the sitter was photographed with-
out having to hold his or her pose for an uncomfortable
period of time. Photographers renowned for their skill
in instantaneous photography include some of the most
celebrated praticioners of the medium, but also include
many anonymous and little-known fi gures.
Photographers used a variety of techniques to achieve
instantaneity in their pictures. The insensitivity of pho-
tographic emulsions was arguably the main obstacle
to making instantaneous photographs. Consequently,
improvements in chemical sensitivity and chemical ac-
celerants were highly prized, and photographers some-
times jealously guarded successful formulas. Exposure
times can also be shortened by increasing the amount
of light entering the camera. Consequently, prior to the
invention of electric lighting, portraitists designed their
studios with large windows, refl ectors, and skylights
to make the most of ambient light. Outdoor subjects
were chosen with careful attention to season, time of
day, and the amount of light they refl ected back at the
camera. In one notable example, Eadweard Muybridge
was known to have scattered white lime on the ground
in order to increase illumination. Waves and clouds can
be particularly bright subjects, and this is one reason
many early instantaneous photographs depict them.
Optics was another important consideration in making
instantaneous pictures. Lenses with wide aperture were
well suited to instantaneous photography. Short focal
lengths were also successful because they transmit
more light than longer lenses of similar manufacture.
Accordingly, many of the best-known early instanta-
neous pictures were made with stereo cameras because
these were usually equipped with simple, short lenses.
In addition, this preference for short lenses meant that
early instantaneous views tend toward a wide-angle,
or ‘fi sh-eye’ appearance. The quality of lens was also
important. Lenses made by the English firm J. H.
Dallmeyer Ltd. were considered among the best for
instantaneous photography. The rapidity with which
the operator could cap and uncap the lens was another
critical element. George Washington Wilson famously
used his cap to control exposure; Captain Stuart Wortley
used his bare hand. When these simple methods could
not keep up, mechanical and electro-mechanical shut-
ters were devised.
Techniques of less obvious merit were also used.
Some instantaneous photographers shot scenes at a dis-
tance, as this caused the subjects they wished to capture
to move less distance across the picture plane than they
would have if taken close-up. This is why early street
scenes are often made from considerable remove. Angle
of view also had an effect, so that aerial perspective wasfrequently employed to increase the illusion of arrested
motion. Photographers could also pan their cameras to
try to keep the relationship between camera and subject
constant. And, when all else failed, instantaneity was
often faked. Many so-called instantaneous photographs
were actually simulations, made using composite print-
ing, creative posing of the subject, and manual retouch-
ing to give the appearance of an action shot.
Concern with instantaneity in photography is evident
since the time of its invention. In correspondence be-
tween Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce in 1830,
the two discuss their inability to create an instantaneous
process, a quality they referred to as ‘promptitude.’ In
his seminal Pencil of Nature, William Henry Fox Talbot
cited his interest in capturing evanescent activity as
one of his motivations for inventing the paper negative
process. He described photographs of such subjects as
‘fairy pictures, creations of a moment.’ Writing in the
Photographic News in 1860, John Herschel suggested
that photography might one day be used to record ‘the
vivid and lifelike reproduction and handing down to the
latest posterity of any transaction of real life—a battle,
a debate, a public solemnity, a pugilistic confl ict, a
harvest home, a launch—anything in short, where any
matter of interest is enacted within a reasonably short
period of time.’
Given their positions as centers of technical innova-
tion, instantaneous photography fl ourished in Britain
and France. Photographers in these countries excelled
in the production of seascapes, which were among the
fi rst widely admired instantaneous subjects. Gustave le
Gray’s photographs of the sea near the Mediterranean
port of Sète in the late 1850s were praised for their
effectiveness in showing rippling and crashing waves,
sailboats moving at speed, and clouds. Eugène Collau
was also highly regarded for his photographs of racing
sailboats, and Jean Victor Warnod was lauded for im-
ages of travelling steamships with columns of smoke
rising from their smokestacks. Edmond Bacot’s appar-
ently unique photograph of waves crashing behind a
row of bathing huts in Boulogne (Société Française de
Photographie), taken in 1850, has become one of the
icons of early instantaneous photography. In Wales, John
Dillwyn Llewelyn photographed turbulent seas in the
early 1850s, with the noteworthy inclusion of standing
fi gures at the shore. George Washington Wilson’s 1859
views of the Loch of Park, in Scotland, were ahead of
their time, capturing rowers plying their craft at sunset.
Other notable British seascapists were Charles Breese,
who made collodion on glass stereo slides in the early
1860s of moonlight effects at sea, and Captain Stuart
Wortley, who made sumptuous images featuring intri-
cate renderings of clouds.
French photographers excelled in the arena of
instantaneous family portraits and genre scenes. JeanINSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHY
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