Yosemite Falls from the Upper House

Carleton E. Watkins's photograph captures Yosemite Falls plunging 3,177 feet between granite cliffs, framed by coniferous forest. Made with the mammoth plate camera—a cumbersome apparatus producing negatives 18 by 22 inches—Watkins's images of Yosemite helped establish landscape photography as a major artistic medium. His technical mastery of exposure and composition brought the valley's dramatic geology into sharp focus, influencing both artistic practice and public perception of Western wilderness during the mid-nineteenth century.