By the time Carleton Watkins made this photograph, he was one of the most acclaimed photographers of the American West, known for images celebrating the grandeur of pure, raw nature. In 1861 and on seven subsequent trips to Yosemite Valley, he produced more than 175 mammoth plate photographs and nearly 500 stereograph views, more than in any other single location in his career of more than 50 years. This photograph, made on Watkins’s second trip to the valley, was taken from Mariposa Trail at a location today known as Old Inspiration Point, nearly 3,000 vertical feet above Yosemite Valley, from which he felt “the view looked best.”

Working with a custom-built camera and glass negatives measuring 18 by 22 inches, Watkins was a master of the wet-plate collodion process. He transported the contents of a studio—2,000 pounds of gear in total—over 75 miles by mule, a feat that was as expensive as it was arduous. Evading bugs and dust as he poured the sticky collodion emulsion on the unwieldy glass plates (at constant risk of shattering), Watkins sensitized, exposed, and processed his photographs in the field. The labor required for a single image demanded a thoughtful composition; here, Watkins places the slender tree daringly off-center to frame Half Dome while rendering the majesty of Yosemite in exceptional detail.