Muybridge

Muybrige is considered one of the great photographers/artists.  He didn't start out in photography, he was initially working in a library but after a stagecoach accident, he suffered damage to his frontal lobe. This is said to sometimes cause a type of personality change. When he came back taking up photography, he changed the way things were done completely.  He was extremely artistic and popular with the images he created.  One piece he photographed was a lighthouse and people placed in particular spots of the lighthouse and its surroundings.  The creativity really came in when he created the clouds and skyline himself. The image was taken without clouds but he added them in to bring a certain emotional feel to the photograph.  

One thing he is very well known for was his work with Leland Stanford and trying to figure out whether or not horses run picking up all four legs off of the ground at the same time.  The scientific portion of his work kicked in when he was actually taking the photographs and setting up to get the appropriate shots for his images.  He used chemicals with his photography, carried his own darkroom with him, and intelligently made his settings to try and capture the appropriate images.  The shutters on the camera was his challenge with the horses because he had to get the shutter to close fast enough to capture the images.  At one point, he set up a background of white sheets so the horses could run in front of it illuminating the horse itself.  He wanted to basically create stop motion.  He came up with a solution for the shutter issue, which tapped into the scientific side of things.  He lined up multiple cameras, used trip wires that were connected to the shutters, and when the horses would trip the wire running, it would trigger the shutter snapping a photograph.  This is how he caught the four legs of the horses off the ground all at once.  This made a stop motion type of creation and is how a cinema-like piece of art was introduced to the world.