Part A:

Thomas Martin Easterly

Thomas Martin Easterly was born on October 3, 1809 to Tunis and Philomena Easterly. During the 1830s and 40s he worked as a calligrapher and penmanship teacher, traveling around in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York. In 1844 he began taking taking pictures (daguerreotypes) of scenic landscapes and architecture in Vermont. What made him unique compared to other daguerreotypists was that he was the first and only daguerreotypist to engrave his signature on his work and descriptive captions as well. In 1845, Easterly toured the Mississippi River with fellow representative Frederick F. Webb for the Daguerreotype Art Union. They became rather notorious there for their daguerreotypes of some criminals, which were said to be “splendid likenesses” of the men. Moving on from Mississippi, Easterly soon became a popular portrait photographer for wealthy residents of St. Louis. One of his more notable achievements was his daguerreotype of a lightning bolt, on of the very first “instantaneous” photographic images. This was called an “Astonishing Achievement in Art” by the Iowa Sentinel. Soon after this, before Easterly moved back to Vermont in August of 1847, the St. Louis Reveille called him an “unrivaled daguerreotypist.” Easterly was soon called back from Vermont in early 1848 by John Ostrander, the founder of the first daguerreotype gallery in St. Louis. Easterly managed Ostrander’s gallery until after his death a short while later. Many of Easterly’s unique streetscapes were taken while in Ostrander’s gallery. Easterly used these streetscapes to depict life during the 19^th century in urban areas. Easterly continued making daguerreotypes until his death in 1882, but he became less well-known after 1860 when improvements in the art of photography rendered daguerreotypes old-fashioned.

Here are some articles about Thomas Easterly. Wikipedia and Clement Library

And below are some of his daguerreotypes

Part B:

I found these videos about the long exposure effect to create light trails in your photos and I thought they were very interesting. It's definitely a very creative way to take photographs. Usually you set the shutter speech so that there won't be any blur, but by setting it longer you can get some very neat effects. The first video is an example of what light can look like and the second video is a tutorial so you can try it for yourself. Enjoy!