I like a good birthday.  Today is one of them.  Anyone who Googled anything today… surely had to notice the little horseys atop the search page.  You see… today is Eadweard Muybridge’s birthday.  9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904

He is a photographer. He was born in England, but he spent much of his life in the United States.  Eadweard… I guess it is Eadie for short…. or Weardo…. is best know for his ingenious work in stop-motion photography.

His pioneering work on animal locomotion mostly took place in 1877 and 1878.  It started like this……  An wealthy owner of Race Horses… who’s name was Stanford… had some on-the-side-bets with his buddies at the track.  The topic….  “Do all four horse legs leave the ground when that horse is running  racing, trotting?”  Giddyup.

Stanford hired Eadie to shoot the horse… not with a gun… but with a camera… to settle this bet.  Well, Eadweard had a BIG BURLY thinking cap I’ll tell you.  He set up multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs.

Then… he took it further.  He thought… ( out loud in the middle of Ye’ Old  Starbucks one day ) … .. “Hey. This would be funkadellic if I “strung” all of these together. Why… I could show the whole scenario… from first hoof to the last.”   So he came up with a device called…. of all things….a  zoopraxiscope  It pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography…. by a bunch.

He has long been one of my favorites.  Before all his motion studies, he did amazing work at Yosemite.  He made some incredible architecture images as well.  None of this was easy… I can assure you.  The photographic process in 1877 is reminiscent to chiseling a statue out of marble with a butter knife.  And barely faster.

But…. this guy Muybridge has a pretty interesting life.  He moved to San Francisco when he came to the U.S…. and got in a stage coach accident soon after.  I think someone was texting and stagecoaching.

At any rate… he konked his noggin’ pretty good. OMG.  My BFF….  Supposedly, it left him a bit on the bluto side.

Some years later….in 1874 to be exact… Muybridge discovered that his young wife Flora had a lover.  The Lover-Studmuffin was one… Major Harry Larkyns.   Yep.  Old Eadie  sought out Col. Larkyns. He shot and killed the guy…. point blank. Not with his camera.  With a gun.

Muybridge was tried for murder. His defense attorney pleaded insanity due to that pesky head injury that Muybridge had sustained following his stagecoach accident. He was acquitted for “justifiable homicide”. The whole episode interrupted his horse photography experiment.

There is a lot more to his life story.  That is for sure. But you are yawning.  I noticed.

At any rate, he died in the early 1900s … on a visit to England.

He was so dang talented in all things photographic. I’ll let you borrow my book on him sometime. And a thinker too.  Loopy… but clever.

So, just another little click of the camera… in the great history of this world of ours.  And when you string them all together… time flies…. like the gallop of a horse.

Yippee Ki Yay….  Yippee Ki Yay……  .