PLATE BOX IMAGE "I"



Plate "I"
[Fig. 13 credits]
 Plate I depicts a man standing outdoors with eyes closed or squinting from sunlight almost directly overhead. The shape of a distant building (church?) is apparent behind the subject. The image is reversed left to right.

If John Draper took this image, it may have been with the second lens he described using to capture a likeness of the human face. Specifically, the lens of four inches aperture with focal length of 14 inches.[54] With an f stop of about 3.5, when used outdoors in bright sunlight, this lens might provide enough depth of field to capture sharp detail in an area as wide as the human figure.

It would be difficult to use such a lens in very bright light because clear delineation between the vast range of bright and shadowed portions of the photograph would prove difficult. Setting a modern camera with an exposure meter reading brightly lit portions of a scene would have similar result--shadowed portions would not be clearly delineated. It is exactly this result that is evident in plate I. Draper's article written in the spring of 1840 about his fall 1839 experiments, described the limitations of such a lens and appeared to exactly match visual evidence found in this photograph (highlights are mine):
[a] lens of four inches . . . in the open air, in a period varying . . . from 20 to 90 seconds. The dress also is admirably given, even if it should be black; the slight differences of illumination are sufficient to . . . show each button, button-hole, and every fold . . .


Detail of Plate "I". The cravat and coat collar in this phots were probably black, and button holes show distinctly on the lapel of the subject's coat.
[Fig. 14a credits]

Draper's discription continued:
the intensity of such light . . . cannot be endured without a distortion of the features, . . . the rays descend at too great an angle, such pictures have the disadvantage of not exhibiting the eyes with distinctness, the shadow from the eyebrows and forehead encroaching on them . . . and a slight shadow cast from the nose.[55]


Detail of Plate "I"
[Fig. 14b credits]

The plate in question may be a portrait of Theodore Frelinghuysen, president of the University of the City of New York. In 1844 Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen ran for President and Vice President of the United States. The features of the man in plate I compare favorably with Frelinghuysen's face as evinced in later photographs. They share distinctive features, especially around the chin and nose.



Detail of Plate "I" c. 1839, and detail of a Brady photograph of Frelinghuysen c. 1862, reversed.
[Fig. 15 credits]

Late in his life Draper described taking "a very good" portrait of Frelinghuysen.[56] Although he probably referred to a later product of the spring/summer 1840 gallery shared with Morse, there may easily have been earlier, less successful attempts. Besides the above quotation Draper recorded little information concerning his "first" experiments during early fall 1839. He considered this early work as flawed and unimportant.

[To view Plate I compared
with other pictures of Frelinghuysen,
follow this link.]


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