Charles Wales Wyckoff (1916 – May 9, 1998) was an American photographic innovator, a photochemist specializing in high speed photography, also noted today for his innovations in the field of

high dynamic range imaging In photography and videography, multi-exposure HDR capture is a technique that creates extended or high dynamic range (HDR) images by taking and combining multiple exposures of the same subject matter at different exposure levels. Combining m ...

. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was a graduate of

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

. He later did postgraduate work at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

with Harold Edgerton, graduating from MIT in 1941. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

he worked with Edgerton to develop techniques to photograph atomic experiments in the Pacific Ocean. With little resources in the field, he solved chronic fogging problems during tests in the Marshall Islands in 1954, thus saving the entire photographic record of the project. He was later engaged by CBS to analyze the famous

Zapruder film The Zapruder film is a silent 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as United States President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November ...

of the Kennedy assassination. In 1975, with Edgerton and Robert Rines he made headlines by allegedly photographing the

Loch Ness monster The Loch Ness Monster ( gd, Uilebheist Loch Nis), affectionately known as Nessie, is a creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or mor ...

. He was a Life Fellow of the

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...

. In 1967, he was made a Fellow of the

Society for Imaging Science and Technology The Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) is a professional society (a type of research and education organization) in the field of photography. Founded in 1947 as the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers (SPSE), it is head ...

.IS&T citation

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wyckoff, Charles 1916 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American photographers Dartmouth College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People associated with the assassination of John F. Kennedy People from Cleveland