Recently I discovered in my research that Carlton Watkins photographed most of his landscapes using glass wet plate collodion plate negatives. I think I knew that, to some degree, but learning about photo history in a sequential way from the very beginnings to today has been illuminating. Specifically of interest is that wet collodion is only sensitive to blue light. Well, when shooting in the landscape, Carlton Watkins was aware that skies, no matter how many picture-perfect, Toy-Story-style big puffy clouds inhabited them, would render as all white because of the blue wavelength sensitivity.

AND SO: He didn't include them in many of his photographs. I think that's so interesting considering my thoughts in my last post about what I include or don't include in my pictures.

Also interesting were the solutions that Edward Muybridge discovered to this very problem. He would essentially dodge the exposure in the sky in-camera with a special tool he developed, and also photographed reflections.