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The Photographic Equipment used by Richard Daintree
Richard Daintree (1831–1878) Daintree was an innovator who used various specialized photographic formats including panoramic and large-format carbon prints to document the Australian frontier and promote the colony of Queensland at international exhibitions.
Daintree pioneered using the camera as a tool for geological fieldwork and was one of the first to use photography for large-scale promotion.
His work with stereography was a significant part of his career as both a geologist and a photographer. Daintree learned stereographic photography around 1856–1857 at the Royal School of Mines in London, under the instruction of the photographer and metallurgist John Percy. |
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He is known to have used a stereoscopic camera during his field work. This was often a practical choice for his geological expeditions because the equipment was more portable and convenient than large-format wet-plate setups, especially in the harsh Australian climate.
He produced landscapes with geological features that were sold to commercial stereograph companies. There are specific archival records of his stereographic work, such as an untitled stereographic negative from approximately 1868 held by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland.
In 1857, he partnered with Antoine Fauchery to publish photographic albums titled Australia, and they opened a studio in Melbourne in 1858. His work included important early images of Victorian Aboriginal people. exhibitions of Geological Survey photographs and mineral samples.
In 1864, he took up pastoral leases near Townsville and formed a partnership in Maryvale station. In 1872, he was appointed Queensland’s Agent-General in London. He used his photographs and mineral samples at international exhibitions in London, Vienna, and Philadelphia to promote emigration to Australia.
Although the Daintree area was named after him in 1873, he never actually visited the region. He resigned from his position as Agent-General in 1876 due to health issues and was created a CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George). After wintering in France for his health, he died in June 1878 in Beckenham, Kent, and was buried near Cambridge.
much of the above text was sourced from the Douglas Shire Historical Society (Queensland)
and the Dictionary of Australian Artists, editor Joan Kerr.
Special photographic collection
Richard Daintree produced photographs of landscapes, geological formations and people from across Queensland in the 1870s. These are particularly focused on mining and agricultural endeavour in the north of Queensland. His photographs were exhibited in the Queensland displays at 10 international exhibitions from 1871 (London) to 1897 (Brisbane). A selection of photographs was also shown in the Queensland Court at the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879-1880 (being after his death in 1878).
The Queensland Museum in Brisbane holds a collection of over 200 photographs, including overpainted Albumen prints mounted on boards that were used overseas in exhibitions mentioned above. A small number are also held at the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
Richard Daintree's photographic equipment
Richard Daintree famously used a Sutton panoramic camera equipped with Sutton’s achromatic panoramic lens for many of his iconic landscape and field photographs. This pioneering equipment included a 76 mm wide-angle lens patented by Thomas Sutton in 1859. The lens was unique in that it was made of a hollow, globular shell of flint glass filled with water, which produced a 140-degree field of view on curved glass wet-plate negatives.
For portraiture and group studies, especially during his collaboration with Antoine Fauchery on Sun Pictures of Victoria (1858), Daintree used a Petzval lens. This lens was designed by the Viennese scientist Joseph Petzval and was highly regarded for portraiture because it provided sharp focus on the subject, diffused focus on the background, allowing the subject to stand out in relief. Both lenses were used with the wet collodion process.
Richard Daintree's photographic Process
Richard Daintree used the collodion wet-plate process to produce his detailed and often large-format, photographs of 19th-century Queensland, Australia. Working with Antoine Fauchery in Melbourne, Daintree created albumen silver prints, notably for their "Sun Pictures of Victoria" collection in 1858.
Daintree used the Wet Collodion Process. During the 1860s in North Queensland, Daintree operated in difficult, remote conditions using this method to create glass plate negatives. For his exhibitions in London in the 1870s Daintree commissioned large-scale enlargements using the autotype (carbon) process. Many of his photographs especially those used for promotional purposes to attract immigrants to Queensland were albumen prints that were subsequently painted in oils.
The collodion wet-plate process
The collodion wet-plate process is a 19th-century photographic method invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer that requires coating, sensitizing, exposing, and developing a glass or metal plate within 15 minutes while it remains moist. It produces high-quality, detailed negatives or, when on black metal, direct positives (tintypes).
Its major constraint is that the entire process must be completed before the ether and alcohol in the collodion evaporate, giving photographers roughly 10–15 minutes from sensitization to development.
The creation of a collodion wet-plate first involves a glass or metal plate is coated with collodion containing iodide and bromide.
To be Sensitized, the plate is dipped into a silver nitrate bath, creating light-sensitive silver iodide, and loaded into a light-tight holder.
Importantly for the exposure to work, the plate is exposed in the camera immediately, often requiring long exposure times.
Immediately following the exposure, the plate is developed, fixed (usually with sodium thiosulfate or potassium cyanide), washed, and finally varnished to protect the fragile image.
Because of the need for immediate processing, 19th-century photographers required portable darkrooms or tents in the field.
The process, despite its shortcomings, allowed for much shorter exposure times than earlier methods and produced a negative, enabling multiple paper print copies, unlike the unique, single-image daguerreotype. The results included:
Glass Negatives: Used to make albumen prints.
Tintypes (Melainotypes): A positive image on a thin, black-lacquered iron plate.
Ambrotypes: A positive image on glass, backed with black material.
The process dominated photography from the early 1850s until it was superseded by the dry plate process in the 1880s.
Daintree was pioneering in using photography to document geological features and early settler life in Queensland, overcoming the technical difficulties of the wet-plate process in the Australian bush.
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