The chemical stains on Samuel McKinney's hands told the story of his profession before he ever opened his mouth. Fine brown flecks of silver nitrate freckled his fingertips; years of handling pyrogallic developer had yellowed his nails. His clothes reeked faintly of sulfur and ether no matter how many times his wife scrubbed them.
It was 4:30 AM on a Tuesday in October 1890, and McKinney was already awake in the dim loft above his portrait studio in Springfield, Massachusetts, preparing for what he hoped would be a profitable day. Outside, gas lamps flickered in the pre-dawn darkness. Inside, he worked by the glow of a single ruby lantern, testing the chemistry that would decide whether today's portraits lived or died.
This was the reality of portrait photography in 1890: a profession that required the precision of a chemist, the patience of a saint, and the business acumen of a merchant. Every photograph was a small miracle of science, timing, and luck. Every portrait session was a high-stakes gamble where a single misstep could mean financial disaster.
The Morning Ritual of Chemistry
McKinney's day began the same way it had for 15 years: inspecting yesterday's solutions to be sure none had spoiled overnight. Factory-made gelatin dry plates—coated with light-sensitive silver bromide months before they ever reached his studio—had freed him from the messy ritual of dipping glass in silver baths. But the rest of the process still lived or died on fresh chemistry.
Pyrogallic acid developer, an older formula he still trusted even as newer metol-hydroquinone mixes gained favor, blended to a recipe he had tinkered with for a decade. Alkaline accelerator, whose strength he tweaked for the season and the weather. Sodium thiosulfate fixer, ready to arrest the latent image at the exact moment it bloomed. A slight miscalculation in any of these mixtures would fog every plate shot that day.
Chemicals were expensive—an autumn's supply could swallow a significant chunk of a month's profits—and dangerous. McKinney had seen colleagues lose fingertips to caustic spills and develop nagging coughs from dark-room fumes. His own lungs felt weaker than when he opened shop, but the work was steadier than any factory job Springfield could offer. By six o'clock, he had mixed fresh developer, fog-tested a sacrificial plate, and declared the day safe for photography.
The Theater of Portrait Making
McKinney's studio occupied the second story of a downtown building, chosen for the broad north-facing skylight that spilled soft illumination into the room. Natural light was still the king of photography, but McKinney supplemented it with a pair of carbon-arc lamps wired to the building's dynamo and, when clouds rolled in, a cautious puff of magnesium flash powder.
The room looked more like a stage set than a modern photo studio. Heavy curtains rolled on ceiling tracks to sculpt the light. Mirrors on cast-iron stands bounced glints into shadowed cheeks. Props crowded every corner—velvet chairs, fake Greek columns, painted backdrops of book-lined studies and rose-swept gardens.
At center stage stood the camera: a mahogany box the size of a small steamer trunk, perched on a brass-geared tripod that required two men to move. It swallowed 8 × 10-inch dry plates that cost nearly a quarter apiece—about $10 in today's money. McKinney bought them by the case, hundreds at a time, yet each plate still felt precious when he slid it into the holder.
The most intimidating tool in the room wasn't optical at all but mechanical—a wrought-iron head rest hidden behind the sitter's chair. Exposure times had fallen to one to four seconds in good skylight, yet even that sliver of time could record a blink as a blur. The pronged brace cupped the nape of a neck or the brim of a hat, its real duty not to immobilize people for half an hour—as in the collodion era—but merely to steady them for the length of a long breath.
Children's portraits remained tricky; younger ones rarely held still long enough, so most "child" sittings featured adolescents who could heed the commands: "don't move, count to five, now breathe again."
The Economics of Glass and Silver
Mrs. Elizabeth Hartford arrived at ten sharp, her husband and two daughters in tow. The family had put a little money aside each payday for months to afford the sitting, their first professional portrait.
The fee was $3.00 for a mounted 8 × 10 print (roughly $100 today). That covered a single plate, the chemistry to develop and print it, McKinney's time, and the elaborate studio overhead. Extra enlargements were $1.50 each. Many families opted for just one photograph, turning the studio visit into a landmark event.
The Ritual of Mortality
Death remained a frequent caller in 1890s America. Scarlet fever, diphtheria, and tuberculosis claimed lives quickly, and a post-mortem portrait was sometimes the only likeness a family would ever possess.
McKinney handled a handful of sittings each month as "memento mori" commissions—fewer than in the 1870s, but still enough to steady winter revenues. He posed the departed with tenderness, arranging flowers and adjusting limbs so the final image suggested peaceful repose. The work was emotionally draining yet indispensable; the photographs offered families a measure of closure in an age before grief counseling was a phrase.
Weather as Business Partner
Overcast mornings slowed business but did not always halt it. McKinney's skylight delivered ample north light most days, and the arc lamps could stretch a dim afternoon. Only the darkest winter storms forced him to close the doors and reschedule appointments.
Short December days posed their own challenge. He might have only three good hours of light—and arc lamps inflated the chemical fog risk—so many New England photographers slimmed their schedules from Christmas through February and relied on savings from the busier seasons.
The Traveling Photographer's Burden
Twice a month, McKinney loaded his wagon—camera, plate boxes, collapsible dark-tent, a small kit of magnesium flash powder, and a trunk of props totaling nearly three hundred pounds—and rattled off to hill-towns lacking a resident photographer.
The Social Complexities of Class and Commerce
Portrait photographers lived in a social limbo. They served bankers, lawyers, and mill owners, but polite society ranked them with tradespeople. That tension colored every sitting: deference was expected, yet authority had to be maintained lest a session devolve into chaos.
Families approached the camera with near-ceremonial seriousness. Women arrived in bustled silks that required strategic pinning; men adopted solemn expressions deemed suitable for posterity. McKinney learned to read clients' tastes—staid respectability for some, artistic flourishes for others—because a misjudged pose could cost future referrals.
The Technical Innovation Born From Desperation
Constraints drove creativity. To tame variable skylight, McKinney designed sliding mirror arrays that could rim a sitter's hair with a trace of brilliance even on dull days. He compounded developers to suit summer heat or winter chill. These were not artistic indulgences; they were survival tactics in a profession where failure meant refunding the fee and swallowing the cost of the plate.
The Daily Business of Survival
Weather willing, McKinney worked six days a week. Massachusetts blue-laws banned most Sunday commerce, so the camera rested on the Sabbath. A thriving day brought three or four sittings and perhaps seven to ten dollars gross—equivalent to a few hundred modern dollars—yet an entire week could vanish to rain or recession. To cushion the feast-or-famine cycle, he diversified: selling opera glasses, retouching neighbor studios' negatives, and teaching evening classes in photographic chemistry.
Customer relations demanded more diplomacy than any manual taught. Some patrons expected a photograph to rival a painted miniature; others balked at their own wrinkles rendered with disconcerting clarity. McKinney balanced honesty about technical limits with the salesman's promise of memory made tangible.
The Unexpected Rewards
High barriers to entry created local monopolies. McKinney was the only full-time photographer in many of the hill towns he visited; competition consisted of itinerants and eager amateurs whose gelatin plates usually ended in heartbreak. The scarcity fostered long relationships—he watched infants become graduates, then return with sweethearts to mark new chapters on silvered glass. His command of chemistry and optics outpaced that of most college men in town, and curious visitors drifted through the studio to marvel at the marriage of science and art.
What We Lost When Everything Changed
McKinney retired in 1902, selling the skylight studio to a younger man who embraced roll-film cameras and electric flash. The deliberate pace of McKinney's era bred a considered relationship with image-making; every exposure demanded planning, patience, and a careful gamble of coin and chemistry. Families dressed, posed, and remembered. The resulting prints became heirlooms precisely because they were hard-won.
The Enduring Legacy
McKinney died in 1924, having witnessed photography's leap from alchemy to convenience. His studio became a hardware store, then a radio repair shop, and finally, inevitably, a parking lot.
Yet scattered through New England, his portraits survive in parlor drawers and local historical societies. They show faces lit by skylight, frozen in the discipline of a four-second stillness. They remind us that every smartphone snapshot stands on the shoulders of craftsmen who mixed dangerous chemicals by lamplight and wrestled unwieldy mahogany to preserve a sliver of human time.
The brown stains on McKinney's hands told the story of a profession that demanded everything: scientific knowledge, artistic vision, business savvy, physical stamina, and social grace. It was a harder way to make photographs, but perhaps a more intentional way to preserve memory.
In an age of infinite images and instant results, there is something profound in remembering when every photograph was a small miracle purchased with silver, sweat, and a few unblinking seconds of silence. Those who practiced portrait photography in 1890 weren't just taking pictures. They were preserving souls.
Samuel McKinney was not a real person; he serves as an amalgamation of the experience of 1890s portrait photographers.
Lead image by Musser Public Library and Oscar Grossheim, used under Creative Commons, cropped.
Very poorly researched. So many mistakes in the article.
Thank ou for this lovely article, showing a bit if the life of a working photographer in these days.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!