Carleton E. Watkins, renowned nineteenth-century photographer of the American West, began his career in photography in 1854 at the age of 25. Born in Oneonta, N. Y. in 1829, Watkins relocated to California in the spring of 1851 and by 1853-1854 was living in San Francisco. There he was taught the art of photography by Robert Vance (1825-1876), owner of daguerreotype studios in San Francisco and San Jose. By 1856, Watkins had moved on to work as an ambrotypist in the portrait studio of James M. Ford (1827-circa 1877) in San Jose.

Sometime between 1856 and 1858, Watkins began operating as a freelance photographer in the San Jose and San Francisco areas and experimented with large-format outdoor photography using wet-plate collodion negatives. His largest surviving body of work prior to 1861 documents Las Mariposas, the California mining estate of Col. John C. Frémont. In 1861, Watkins traveled to Yosemite with a mammoth-plate camera. The thirty mammoth plates and one hundred stereoscopic negatives that he made during this trip were partly responsible for government protection of Yosemite as a national park and were published in Josiah Whitney’s The Yosemite Book in 1869, one of the first American books devoted solely to landscape photography. Watkins returned to Yosemite many times between 1861 and 1881 to photograph the park and even set up his own gallery there to showcase and sell his photography.

In 1865, Watkins opened his "Yo Semite Gallery" at 425 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. That same year, he won an award for "Mountain Views" at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Industrial Exhibition and, in 1867, won a bronze medal for his mammoth plates of Yosemite at the Paris International Exposition, earning him an international reputation as a landscape photographer. In July of that same year, Watkins traveled to Oregon to photograph Portland, Or. and the Columbia River area. Beginning in Portland, Watkins traveled south to Oswego and Oregon City on the Willamette River to photograph the area and north again across the Columbia to Vancouver in the Washington Territory. He then traveled east along the Columbia River, following the trade route of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, finally leaving Oregon in November of 1867 with fifty-nine mammoth plates and one hundred stereograph negatives. Fifty of these mammoth views were exhibited in Portland in 1868 at Shanahan’s Art Gallery, garnering Watkins much acclaim. He also won the top award that year for a major exhibit of Pacific Coast photography at the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute Industrial Exhibition.

In 1875, financial troubles and a nationwide economic slump caused Watkins to lose his studio in San Francisco, his gallery in Yosemite, and the entire collection of what is now known as his “Old Series” negatives. His business was sold to Isaiah W. Taber, who continued to print these negatives under his own studio imprint. However, by 1876, Watkins was up and running again, determined to re-photograph many of his famous views for what he called his “New Series of Pacific Coast Views.” As part of this series, Watkins made a return trip to Oregon in 1882, stopping at Portland and the Columbia River before continuing north to photograph the Puget Sound area of the Washington Territory and Victoria, British Columbia. He returned to Oregon again in 1883 to photograph Cascade Locks on the Columbia River, as well as other features of the river valley, and again during the winter of 1884-1885, when he photographed a winter blizzard that snowed in an Oregon Railway and Navigation Railroad train on its tracks in the Columbia River Gorge.

Carleton Watkins continued to photograph until the early 1890s, when his health began to fail. For the rest of his life, he lived in near blindness and poverty. All of his negatives were destroyed in the April 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. For the next decade, Watkins lived under the custody of his daughter and the Napa State Hospital for the Insane and died on June 23, 1916. His photographs remain some of the earliest and most well-regarded visual records of the landscape of the American West and its early settlement.

Brady first learned the art of photography in 1841, where he studied with Samuel B. Morse at the New York Academy of Design and at Morse's own daguerreotype school. Brady opened a daguerreotype studio in New York City, New York in 1844, where over the years he concentrated on portraits, most notably famous contemporary Americans, such as the statesman Henry Clay. In 1847, with his business flourishing, Brady opened another portrait studio in Washington, D.C. In 1860, Brady opened the largest of his galleries, called the National Portrait Gallery, and in that year took his first of many famous portraits of Abraham Lincoln. In 1861, Brady requested permission to document the Civil War. From 1861 to 1865, he organized teams of photographers attached to all parts of the United States Army who documented battles, officers and equipment. Brady and his team were able to cover all the battles and events of the war, which include portraits of Generals Grant and Lee, as well as unflinching images of dead soldiers. Brady approached the state concerning purchasing his collection, but it wasn't until 1875, after a vote in Congress, that the War Department of the United States purchased part of his Civil War collection of glass negatives. The purchase came too late, as Brady was reduced to poverty, selling the last of his galleries in 1895.

Born 17 July 1824; died 31 August 1903. In 1857, Weed began his photographic career in Sacramento, California, working as a camera operator for the daguerreotype studio of George W. Watson. In 1858, he joined R.H. Vance as manager of Vance's Sacramento photography gallery. Soon the firm was renamed Vance & Weed and another studio was opened in San Francisco, California. In 1864, Weed took over the San Francisco business. In 1859, he moved to San Francisco, California and photographed at Yosemite National Park for the first time. In 1860, Weed travelled to Hong Kong and the Far East. He established the firm Weed & Howard in Hong Kong. Weed travelled to Nevada, United States, in 1861-1862 to photograph mining operations. In 1865, he established the photographic studio Weed Brothers in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1865-1866, Weed returned to Hong Kong. In the 1880s, Weed was working as a photoengraver.