Eadweard Muybridge *** Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

***** Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was an early production experiment on June 19, 1878 that led to the development of motion pictures. The motion picture consists of 24 photographs in a fast-motion series that were shown on a zoopraxiscope. The photographs were taken by Eadweard Muybridge, who was commissioned to produce them by Leland Stanford. The concept of the shoot was to show that horses who are galloping lift all four hooves completely off the ground. During July 1877, Muybridge tried to settle Stanford's question with a series of progressively clearer, single photographic negatives showing Stanford's trotter, Occident, airborne in the midst of a racing-speed gait at the Union Park Racetrack in Sacramento, California. One of the prints was sent to the local California press, but because the film negative was retouched, the press dismissed it. Negative retouching was very common at the time, however, and the photograph won Muybridge an award at the Twelfth San Francisco Industrial exhibition. The following year, Stanford financed his next project, although it was rumored that the two had a $25000 wager on a bet. The motion picture was taken at Palo Alto on June 19, 1878 in the presence of the press. Muybridge photographed a Kentucky-bred mare named Sallie Gardner that Stanford owned. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's path. Muybridge used 24 cameras which were 27 inches apart and about one twenty-fifth of a second in time. The shutters ...

View Count: 7 Date: January 22, 2012