Professional photographers have operated in Guernsey since the early days of the art, not many in the beginning had a permanent base in the island. This was due to the limited selling market as the costs for taking a Daguerreotype was very high and you had to be a top earner to afford a cased image such as this. The Daguerreotype had to be placed under glass due to the fragile silver plated copper plate being very easily damaged and tarnished.

Most photographers in the early days would have been French as Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre gave the process free to the French nation while in England it was licenced by him and therefore the process was restricted due to the patent cost. Frenchman, Arsene Garnier may have been the first truly successful photographer who was eventually permanently based in Guernsey to use this process (1848), though there may have been others operating before him.

With William Henry Fox Talbot's photographic inventions, Calotype paper negatives and Salt print positives were around at the same time in the 1840s and were certainly used in Guernsey, but they could not match a Daguerreotype for its fine detail which was so admired and desired for portraiture, so most professionals used Daguerre's process in these early days. In the beginning before improvement in the process, the speed of the Daguerreotype like the Calotype was very slow, which was limited further in practice by indoor photography. Fast Petzval lenses and special rooms with glass skylights were therefore used to decrease the exposure time.

The mass market for professionals in Europe and the rest of the world only started after Englishman, Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion (wet plate) process in 1848 and published it in 'The Chemist' in March 1851. The Collodion glass negative was usually printed on albumen coated paper which gave the detail of a daguerreotype but at a more reasonable cost. It also had a faster exposure time, was cheaper and did not need extra protection like the Daguerreotype. Due to the speed of the emulsion, outdoor photography was now easier.

The start of outdoor photography also gained popularity with stereo-views (3-D) using this process. Most professionally stereo views in Guernsey are however from the 1860s due the increased demand by travellers from the UK and the Continent. Professional studio Carte de Visites also took off in Guernsey during this period because of the lower costs due to efficiency and competition between the photographic establishments.

The popularity of the Carte de Visite was then born, and a Gallery is dedicated to it here. Please see the CARTE DE VISITE heading for a more detailed history.

Shown in this 'EARLY PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS' Gallery are the names and photographs of Professional photographers who the author can verify as he has personally seen named images. Many photographs have no names on them and therefore cannot be attributed until evidence is found - In many cases, due to the scarcity of other examples this may never happen.

The shown list is far from complete.