Going Afield: Mobile Photography Studios of Early Oregon Photographers

In 1867, Carleton Watkins traveled north from San Francisco, California, to photograph areas around Portland and the Columbia River Gorge. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company sponsored a part of his trip with the intention that he would document and promote its new routes up the Columbia River. By the time Watkins traveled to Oregon, he had already established himself as a landscape photographer with his photographs of Yosemite’s dramatic landscapes in central California. Few other photographers at the time were able to produce such large and artistically composed photographic prints.

During this early era of photographic technology, photographs could not be easily enlarged. This meant that the glass plate for the negative had to be the same size as the resulting print. At a time when most prints were only a few inches wide, Watkins worked to perfect the wet-plate process on increasingly larger plates of glass. For his landscape photography, Watkins had a custom camera constructed to accommodate eighteen by twenty-two-inch glass plate negatives. This camera became known as Watkin’s “Mammoth Camera.” It was a fitting name for the cumbersome 100-pound telescoping cabinet that measured thirty inches on each side, and with a length of three feet at full lens extension.

For Portland area amateur photographers at the turn of the twentieth century, the once arduous trip up the Columbia River became a popular summer tradition. The Oregon Camera Club promoted their regular outings up into the Gorge as a healthy and enjoyable form of recreation. Lily E. White was an active Camera Club member, and she frequently showed her photographs in art salons and served as a demonstrator to help teach other club members the art of photography.

In 1903, White had a custom house boat commissioned to facilitate her extended trips up the Gorge. White christened her boat, the Raysark. In a 1906 Pacific Monthly feature, the Raysark was described as having “an ample and luxuriously appointed cabin, six staterooms, bathroom, dining cabin, galley, a three-ton ice chest, linen closet, and many other closets and conveniences.” Among those conveniences was a state-of-the-art dark room. The Raysark allowed White and her guests from the Oregon Camera Club to comfortably live and photograph on the river for extended periods.

When William Finley and Herman Bohlman ventured into the remotest corners of Oregon with their cameras, they focused their lenses on the state’s birds rather than its sweeping landscapes. The duo loaded their studio equipment in wagons, canoes, and even on bicycles to document the birdlife in all corners of the state. For their series of photographs of nesting birds, they even hoisted their studio into the sky by using ropes and pulleys to set up their camera equipment in the treetops. In 1908, Finley and Bohlman converted Bohlman’s White Steamer automobile into a rolling camper and photography studio. Storage panels built into the sides housed their equipment, fold out tables allowed space to work, and custom cushioned benches could be refashioned into beds at night. The heavy canvas tarping that replaced the roof and sides of the auto inspired Finley and Bohlman to dub the touring car their “Modern Prairie Schooner.”

Today, Finley and Bohlman are remembered as both nature photographers and environmental activists and were active with the Audubon Society of Portland. They used their photographs to bring attention to precarious position of Oregon’s bird populations due to overhunting. Among several other accomplishments, their advocacy was instrumental in the establishment of the Three Arch Rocks, Klamath, and Malheur National Wildlife Refuges.