author
S. D. (Samuel Dwight) Humphrey
1823–1883
An early American photography writer and publisher, he helped explain new image-making methods to a growing audience in the 1850s. His practical manuals and journals capture the excitement of photography when it was still a brand-new craft.
2 Audiobooks
American Hand Book of the Daguerreotype
by S. D. (Samuel Dwight) Humphrey
A Practical Manual of the Collodion Process, Giving in Detail a Method For Producing Positive and Negative Pictures on Glass and Paper.
by S. D. (Samuel Dwight) Humphrey
About the author
Working in the early days of photography, Samuel Dwight Humphrey was known for writing clear practical guides to daguerreotype and collodion processes. His best-known books include American Hand Book of the Daguerreotype and A Practical Manual of the Collodion Process, manuals aimed at people learning the fast-changing techniques of nineteenth-century photography.
He was also associated with Humphrey's Journal of Photography, one of the earliest photographic periodicals published in New York. Through that journal and his books, he helped spread technical knowledge at a time when photography was moving from a specialist experiment into a wider professional and popular practice.
Available sources identify him as S. D. (Samuel Dwight) Humphrey and give his life dates as 1823–1883, though some records list a birth year of 1822. The reliable details that stand out most clearly are his role as an American photographer, editor, and author of influential how-to works from photography's earliest decades.