Carleton Watkins Valparaíso, 1849
daguerreians in the southern hemisphere [Fig. 6].[16] The polished and sensitized plate was fitted into the back of the daguerreotype camera, the sitter was quickly coached for pose and expression, and the exposure was made by removing and replacing the lens cap (there were no shutters at this time). Posing the subject and making the exposure would have taken no more than five or ten minutes.[17]
The plate on which the sitter's latent image had been captured by the light-sensitive silvered surface was then developed and fixed using the implements shown in [Fig. 5]. Once the plate was developed and fitted into its protective case, the customer would be out the door in thirty minutes or so after arrival.[18] During the South American winter months of June through August, Vance y Cia. would have been lucky to receive a few customers each day, but Carleton could make up to three or four portraits per hour when the season of navigation was at its peak between October and May. Newly arrived North Americans were lined up to secure visual proof for loved ones they were still alive after being at sea for six months.
Carleton's life in Valparaíso was full of exotic people and food much like the Panama he had recently left, and with cultural elements not found in Otsego County, New York.[19] For example there was an opera house with twice-a-week performances held between October and March, there was a field for playing cricket, and there was a course for horse racing. Guitar music was heard in the streets, women danced the suggestive fandango in night clubs, and men practiced the combative game of kite-fighting. Convicts were marched through the streets in chains and publicly incarcerated in stockades-on-wheels. Revelers were conveyed back and forth between the places of amusement along the three-mile waterfront in small horse-drawn taxis that operated day-and-night. However, an unpleasant novelty for Carleton was the frequency of earthquakes.
After he had been practicing photography for less than six months, just as the South American winter was giving way to spring, on November 18, 1849, one week after his twentieth birthday, a series of earthquakes struck the Chilean coast. They were felt from near the city of La Serena at 30 degrees south latitude, to below Valparaíso at 35 degrees south latitude. Tremors were felt over several days causing, along with other