Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge is one of the earliest and most popular photographers in the entire world. He had very revolutionary work for his time period, and much of his work is still well-known even to those who may not really follow the history of photography much. His pioneering came in the form of using still photos to capture motion.

While Eadweard Muybridge was a native of England, later on he found himself in the United States. He did a lot of still photography of the landscape and terrain. These photos were sent back to England and often showed the people of England what the spacious view of America actually looked like.

However, his rise to fame actually came when he was involved in a case with Leland Stanford, the California governor at the time. There was a huge debate and uproar over whether a horse when it galloped actually left the ground with all four feet at one time. Eadweard Muybridge came up with an ingenious idea of using multiple cameras to capture a galloping horse in action. Therefore, over the course of roughly sixteen snapshots taken mere fractions of a second apart from one another you could see whether the horse was actually in air or not. Then, putting these snapshots together in a rapid motion would display the horse in motion. This was an ingenious way at that point in time of proving whether a horse did in fact leave the ground or not. In case you are wondering, yes, a horse does leave the ground with all four hooves at the same time while galloping.

This work became very popular after that time era. In fact, many of our earliest films were taken with similar production styles. The earliest cartoons created by Walt Disney used that technology as well.

The photographer, Eadweard Muybridge is also well known in the law system for other reasons other than proving his case about horses. Later on, he received a letter from a Major of the United States Army proving to him that his wife was having an affair. Apparently this letter asked a question. He walked into the room of this Major and ended up saying, “Here is your answer to the letter you sent my wife”. He shot the man and killed him. He was acquitted on grounds of justified homicide. His plea was not guilty due to insanity because of a horse and carriage accident sometime before that. Eadweard Muybridge was one of the first to have that type of defense, which rarely works and was even dismissed in his case as well.

Filed Under: Famous photographers

Tags: english photographer, landscape photographer, motion pictures, pioneer, zoopraxiscope