Mirror Lake and Lake Placid, Adirondack Mountains

William Henry Jackson was one of the most famous and prolific photographers of the 19th century American West. He took up the camera in the late 1860s and was the official photographer of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming) from 1870 to 1878. He then embarked on a long career as a photographic entrepreneur, producing scenic and topographic views throughout the United States. Beginning in 1897, much of this work was issued by the Detroit Publishing Company, which Jackson headed. This panorama is distinguished by its technique: it is skillfully printed (on one sheet of photographic paper) from four individual negatives. Working a century before the introduction of Photo Shop, Jackson (and a few others) was able to create such large and nearly seamless prints from two or more "mammoth" glass-plate negatives.