photo #4891461

This photographic artwork titled Brig upon the Water is by nineteenth-century French artist Gustave Le Gray, who was an important figure in the development of early photography. One of the techniques he devised, called ‘combination printing’, allowed him to print seascape photographs with both the sea and the sky correctly exposed. The extreme range of brightnesses above and below the horizon that we take for granted today in a scene like this could never be captured by the camera technology of 170 years ago. Le Gray achieved it by exposing two separate negatives, one for the sea and one for the sky, and combining them into a single print. He perfected the technique with this atmospheric image, preserving a moment in time of the sky and sea that would otherwise have been lost forever.Brig upon the Water (1856) by Gustave Le Gray, showing Cumulus clouds with crepuscular rays, held in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, US.