professional photographer, trained at Edwin Dalton 's Sydney studio in 1857, then opened his own photographic rooms in George Street in 1858. He took over William Bradley 's premises in Pitt Street in 1871 and remained there until 1891. In 1872 he advertised as Bradley’s successor and as the winner of a 'Prize Medal’ for coloured photographs at that year’s New South Wales Agricultural Society Exhibition. The plain and coloured photographic portraits he showed at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition were awarded a highly commended certificate. In 1885 he was producing dry-plate 'instantaneous pictures’ with a new camera weighing about 10 pounds (4 kg) which, he claimed, had 'a universal range of focus’ so that his photograph of the Double Bay Regatta, for instance, showed all the sailing boats and spectator craft sharply and clearly.

Scott is known to have been producing portraits by the autotype process in 1879, nine years after Victor Prout introduced this carbon-printed paper technique to New South Wales. In 1881 he was pioneering the gelatine negative process; in November he won first prize in a photographic competition held by Mawson & Swan of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), major manufacturers and suppliers of gelatine-bromide plates. Scott’s winning photograph, a portrait of the singer Madeleine St Clair, was called in the Photographic News , 'a charming study of a female head; it is a bust portrait of a lady in evening dress, the posing and lighting being managed with much taste’.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011