I have been looking at early calotypes by Robert Adamson (1821-1848), partner of D O Hill in Edinburgh from 1843) and I now think he and his brother Dr. John were using interesting techniques to 'record' buildings with corrected vertcals - rather than just photographing them. I am beginning to think he might be regarded in this respect as the first professional architectural photographer.
With the early cameras available to him he would not have been able to raise the lens panel (that development seems to have happened after 1850). So I think he was moving the calotpe negative around, inside a larger camera, in order to keep the verticals vertical and adjust the composition. The print below is from the Clarkson Stanfield album at the University of Texas: https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll123 It was sold to the artist Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867) before the 1st October 1845.
As far as I know there is no negative for this image so I have inverted and flipped it. This is what would have appeared in the back of Adamson's camera (I am claiming this for Adamson alone as D O Hill is shown lying in the foreground - interestingly he was present in most of the calotypes taken in Greyfriar's Churchyard).
Using the vignetting I have indicated the covering power of the lens with the black circle. (This is of course a positive - in the negative the dark corners here would have been unexposed) You can see that Adamson moved the negative down in the camera back, in order to reduce the foreground and bring the castle into a better position, while keeping the verticals. Given that the image is 6¼ x 4½ he was probably using the camera used for 8½ x 6½ inch negatives (See Colin Ford in the introduction to An Early Victorian Album (New York, 1976) for a list of the sizes H&A used)
I am working on other examples of this manipulation in Robert's work and some of them are quite remarkable.
I would welcome comments and/or corrections!
Joe
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