Arthur Clarence Pillsbury
Encyclopedia
Arthur Clarence Pillsbury (1870–1946) was a United States
photographer.
Pillsbury's career spilled over into nearly every kind of application for photography. His career began in 1895 when as a student
he documented in one hour with 60 different remarkable images the first fraternity rush at Stanford University
. Pillsbury studied Mechanical Engineering
at Stanford University
and is credited with the invention of a specimen slicer (for microscopy) and a circuit panorama camera before leaving college. Two years later he invented the first circuit panorama camera
and soon after took it to the Yukon
to capture the opening of the mining fields and towns. By 1900 he had photographed most of the notable features of the Western United States
. He used both the panorama
and conventional cameras to capture the panorama images that went around the world in the immediate aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
and fire. He also worked for the San Francisco Examiner as a photojournalist from 1903 to March 1906.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, he began returned to a career as a landscape
photographer when he purchased a studio in Yosemite Valley
. During this period he also produced art photographs and started using motion picture cameras, producing the first nature films which he showed in Yosemite at his Studio of the Three Arrows. Here is also invented the first lapse-time motion picture camera for the specific purpose of saving the wild flowers of Yosemite that were then threatened with extinction from excessive mowing.
His candid photos captured the sense of wonder experienced by people in Yosemite as they saw its natural wonders. His inventions in later life included the microscopic motion picture camera, the X-Ray Motion picture camera and the underwater motion picture camera. His work was done without filters because his background as a photojournalist and his life philosophy
had led him to the conviction that his job was to produce images and let the viewer bring to that experience the interpretation.
. He had been drawn there by stories from an old friend of his mother's Susan B. Anthony
, who was then making a tour through California
speaking on the issue of women's suffrage
. The young man fell in love with Yosemite and in 1897 bought a studio there. But his young wife refused to spend summers in the wilderness and left him. Despondent, he took his newly finished senior project, the first circuit panorama camera, and went to the Yukon where he photographed the opening of the mining
towns and fields.
Pillsbury often visited Yosemite after returning to the lower 48 in 1899. There he photographed John Muir
for Camera Craft Magazine in 1901, Galen Clark
, George Fiske
, and Teddy Roosevelt. These and other photos were later published as postcard
s by the Pillsbury Picture Company. Pillsbury had begun producing post cards with his photos as soon as this innovative form of communication was authorized by the United States Congress
in 1898.
In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
and fire, and the income from his photos, Pillsbury, who had just quit his job with the San Francisco Examiner to found the Pillsbury Picture Company, was able to fulfill his long time ambition to buy a studio in Yosemite and purchased the Studio of the Three Arrows later that same year. His background in biology
and botany
, encouraged by his parents who were both medical doctors, made him aware of the steady reduction in the number and types of wild flowers that blossomed in the meadow
s there. So in 1912 he built the first lapse-time camera, made the first nature movie showing the dance of a flower
raising its face to the sun
and managed to persuade the National Park Service
to stop the practice of mowing the meadows to produce fodder for their horse
s.
His specimen cards of flowers, hand tinted at the studio, were as often framed as used in the meadows to identify the many types of plants blooming there. His work in Yosemite included both the classical production photos of such artists as Adams, d'orotones that had the depth and clarity of holograms, and his own unique work with flowers and also his candids of the people of Yosemite. That, with his inventions which later included the first microscopic motion picture camera, "Sunset Magazine, May 1927", the X-Ray motion picture camera and the first underwater motion picture camera, "Picturing Miracles of Plant and Animal Life and Popular Science, January 1929", were used on his extensive lecture tours to all the major forums and universities in the United States, England and the South Seas. His many nature films, eventually shown in theaters as well as in schools, clubs and for his lecture tours awakened the public to the need for conservation in the wake of Muir's death in 1914.
Pillsbury gave advice to photographers for shooting pictures at Yosemite National Park in a 1921 handbook.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer.
Pillsbury's career spilled over into nearly every kind of application for photography. His career began in 1895 when as a student
Student
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...
he documented in one hour with 60 different remarkable images the first fraternity rush at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. Pillsbury studied Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and is credited with the invention of a specimen slicer (for microscopy) and a circuit panorama camera before leaving college. Two years later he invented the first circuit panorama camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
and soon after took it to the Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
to capture the opening of the mining fields and towns. By 1900 he had photographed most of the notable features of the Western United States
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
. He used both the panorama
Panorama
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model....
and conventional cameras to capture the panorama images that went around the world in the immediate aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
and fire. He also worked for the San Francisco Examiner as a photojournalist from 1903 to March 1906.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, he began returned to a career as a landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
photographer when he purchased a studio in Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. The valley is about long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines...
. During this period he also produced art photographs and started using motion picture cameras, producing the first nature films which he showed in Yosemite at his Studio of the Three Arrows. Here is also invented the first lapse-time motion picture camera for the specific purpose of saving the wild flowers of Yosemite that were then threatened with extinction from excessive mowing.
His candid photos captured the sense of wonder experienced by people in Yosemite as they saw its natural wonders. His inventions in later life included the microscopic motion picture camera, the X-Ray Motion picture camera and the underwater motion picture camera. His work was done without filters because his background as a photojournalist and his life philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
had led him to the conviction that his job was to produce images and let the viewer bring to that experience the interpretation.
Yosemite
He arrived in Yosemite for the first time by bicycle in 1895 while still a student in mechanical engineering at Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. He had been drawn there by stories from an old friend of his mother's Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
, who was then making a tour through California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
speaking on the issue of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
. The young man fell in love with Yosemite and in 1897 bought a studio there. But his young wife refused to spend summers in the wilderness and left him. Despondent, he took his newly finished senior project, the first circuit panorama camera, and went to the Yukon where he photographed the opening of the mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
towns and fields.
Pillsbury often visited Yosemite after returning to the lower 48 in 1899. There he photographed John Muir
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
for Camera Craft Magazine in 1901, Galen Clark
Galen Clark
Galen Clark is known as the first European American to discover the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees, and is notable for his role in gaining legislation to protect it and the Yosemite area, and for 24 years serving as Guardian of Yosemite National Park.-Early life and education:Galen Clark...
, George Fiske
George Fiske
George Fiske was an American landscape photographer.Fiske was born in Amherst, New Hampshire and moved west with his brother to San Francisco. He apprenticed with Charles L. Weed and worked with Carleton E. Watkins, both early Yosemite photographers. Fiske and his wife moved to Yosemite in 1879...
, and Teddy Roosevelt. These and other photos were later published as postcard
Postcard
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope....
s by the Pillsbury Picture Company. Pillsbury had begun producing post cards with his photos as soon as this innovative form of communication was authorized by the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
in 1898.
In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
and fire, and the income from his photos, Pillsbury, who had just quit his job with the San Francisco Examiner to found the Pillsbury Picture Company, was able to fulfill his long time ambition to buy a studio in Yosemite and purchased the Studio of the Three Arrows later that same year. His background in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
and botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, encouraged by his parents who were both medical doctors, made him aware of the steady reduction in the number and types of wild flowers that blossomed in the meadow
Meadow
A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants . The term is from Old English mædwe. In agriculture a meadow is grassland which is not grazed by domestic livestock but rather allowed to grow unchecked in order to make hay...
s there. So in 1912 he built the first lapse-time camera, made the first nature movie showing the dance of a flower
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...
raising its face to the sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
and managed to persuade the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
to stop the practice of mowing the meadows to produce fodder for their horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s.
His specimen cards of flowers, hand tinted at the studio, were as often framed as used in the meadows to identify the many types of plants blooming there. His work in Yosemite included both the classical production photos of such artists as Adams, d'orotones that had the depth and clarity of holograms, and his own unique work with flowers and also his candids of the people of Yosemite. That, with his inventions which later included the first microscopic motion picture camera, "Sunset Magazine, May 1927", the X-Ray motion picture camera and the first underwater motion picture camera, "Picturing Miracles of Plant and Animal Life and Popular Science, January 1929", were used on his extensive lecture tours to all the major forums and universities in the United States, England and the South Seas. His many nature films, eventually shown in theaters as well as in schools, clubs and for his lecture tours awakened the public to the need for conservation in the wake of Muir's death in 1914.
Pillsbury gave advice to photographers for shooting pictures at Yosemite National Park in a 1921 handbook.