Who was the first photographer to photograph animals?

There is no doubt that the earliest and most famous photographer who photographed animals was EadweardMuybridge. He was born in England and used to be a landscape photographer for the American government.

1872, California, USA, Leland Stanford, a rich man who started from business and railways, bet with others that a fast horse would leave the ground on all fours at the same time. In order to win the bet, he asked muybridge to help him photograph the horse running. In this way, muybridge became the first person in the world to apply photography technology to moving pictures.

In order to carry out this unprecedented experiment, muybridge set up 24 darkrooms along the road. There is a photographer and a camera in each darkroom. The shutter of each camera is tied with a rope, and the rope is pulled to the other side of the track. After hearing the whistle, each photographer quickly put 24 wet collodion plates into the camera, because if these plates dry in a few minutes, they will lose their photosensitive effect. After all 24 cameras are mounted on the bottom plate, let the horse run on the runway. When the horse runs, it kicks off the rope. Every kicked rope will electronically flip the shutter of the camera. At the moment when the horse kicks off the rope, the running posture of the horse will be photographed in the camera.

The experiment took six years. At first, muybridge never succeeded because his camera lacked a high-speed shutter. In addition, the rope is too strong, the horse keeps kicking, and even the darkroom, camera and photographer have been dragged down.

1877, muybridge finally succeeded. This time, he only used 12 cameras, and each camera is equipped with its own special shutter, and the exposure speed can reach 1/500 seconds.

The photos taken by muybridge while the horse was running proved that Stanford's argument was correct, and he won a bet of $25,000. Although these photos are underexposed, they show that the horse's four legs only leave the ground when they are all contracted below the abdomen.

Later, muybridge found that if these photos were placed in an animation tube in sequence and then rotated, you would see a horse running through a small hole. This is the earliest attempt of active film.

In addition, muybridge was entrusted by the University of Pennsylvania to take hundreds of animal photos for scientific research. The photos analyze thousands of actions of human beings and animals, from simple human walking and sports activities to kangaroo jumping and bird flying, which greatly enriches people's understanding of moving objects. These photos were published on 1887, which caused a sensation.

In this way, the film has achieved unprecedented success. It has not only become an encyclopedia for scientists and artists to study movements, but also a standard for checking whether early paintings are correct. People were shocked when they found that many famous paintings were not very accurate from these moving pictures. For example, before this, the painter painted a galloping horse with four legs separated, like a toy rocking horse. It was not until muybridge's photos proved that this was wrong that it was corrected.