William Henry Jackson was born April 4, 1843, in Keeseville, New York. He was a man of great energy and love for the outdoors and especially the breadth and heights of the mountain West. His life spanned the first century of the new visual art of photography and the great era of westward expansion. He began his photography career in 1858 in New York as a photographic retouching artist in the burgeoning photography industry and ended it in New York City with his death in 1942. In between these years he became increasingly proficient in his chosen field through his studio and field work in Omaha, Nebraska, his nine year odyssey as the official photographer with Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden’s United States Geological Survey of the Territories, his 15 years in Denver, Colorado, 17 months of Asian and Pacific travel with the World Transportation Commission, his 27 years in Detroit associated with the Detroit Photographic Company and its successor the Detroit Publishing Company, and finally his highly productive "so-called" retirement years from 1924 to 1942. He died on June 30, 1942, in New York, New York at the age of 99.

Isaiah West Taber was born August 17, 1830, to Freeman Faber and Louisa Dean in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He moved to California in 1850 but moved back to Syracuse, New York in 1854 to open his first photography studio. In 1862, he married Ann Slocum. They had a daughter together, Daisy Tabor, in 1876. He also had two children, a son and a daughter, Louisa Taber, with Mary F. R. Howland in 1860 and 1861. He then returned to California in 1864, where he worked in the studio of Bradley and Rulofson until 1873. He opened his own studio in 1871, where he produced his own photographs but also gained fame for reproducing those of Carleton Watkins. His work in the 1880s included a six-week photographic trip to the Hawaiian Islands. By the 1890s, he had expanded to include studios in London, England and throughout Europe. However, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his San Francisco studio, gallery, and negative collection, thus ending his photographic career. He died February 22, 1912 in San Francisco.

Gebrüder Wehrli was formed by Arthur, Bruno, and Harry Wehrli in the mid-1890s. They primarily took photographs of and around the Swiss Alps. Their work is known for very sharp black and white contrast and for their eye for detail. Their photographs were popular in the 1890s and early 20th century as tourist postcards. In 1904, they merged with Bachmann of Lucerne to become Wehrli AG and Company.

John S. Johnston was born sometime in the late 1830s in Britain. He had moved to New York City by the late 1880s, where he worked actively to photograph maritime scenes, especially yachts, and landscapes. Among his landscape photography, his photographs of New York City landmarks and cityscapes are most prominent. He died suddenly on December 17, 1899, at Niagara Falls.