April 9 marks the 182nd birth anniversary of Eadweard J Muybridge who is a British photographer. Google pays tribute to the famous photographer through Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. It is a film strip style collection of various shots using 24 cameras. It captured the running habits of racehorses which were owned by a Californian businessman and animal breeder named Leland Stanford.
He wanted to know if horses had their four legs off the ground whenever they gallop. So Stanford commissioned Muybridge to attempt to find out if this previously portrayed appearance by painters of galloping horses is true or not.
It was taken in 1872 and is considered as one of the earliest forms of videography. It showed that hours indeed had all four legs leave the ground during galloping. But it does not look like how artists depicted them; the horses’ legs were stretched out fore and aft. The four legs were actually tucked up under the horse.
In the middle of 1860’s, Muybridge focused on architectural subjects and landscapes. The photograph of Yosemite National Park helped in establishing his career as a photographer. Unfortunately, in 1874 he was prosecuted and later acquitted for the murder of his wife’s lover. His lawyer entered a plea of insanity despite the fact that the jury found out that it was a justifiable homicide.
He used his cameras to photograph animals and people to study their movement. He also worked under the support of University of Pennsylvania. Later on he went back to UK and died of heart attack in May of 1904. This is after he has published the last series of his popular books which were based on research and his images.
