Carleton Watkins made his name with views of Yosemite Valley, which he photographed repeatedly over a twenty-year period, beginning in 1861. By that time, he was a virtuoso practitioner of the difficult wet-collodion process using "mammoth" glass plates, which rendered the vastness of the landscape and its infinite details with unsurpassed scope and clarity. During a visit to Yosemite in 1865–66, Watkins ascended the Sentinel Dome. He made a series of three photographs of this unparalleled view, each an integral, self-sufficient picture. When seen together, they form a broad and encompassing embrace of the valley.

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