Between the late 1830's and 1850 photography advanced quickly both in the chemical processes that were used but also in the choice of subjects. From the static still lifes and portraits that could be taken with long exposures in controlled conditions it became possible to take exterior shots - at first these were of the locations where the inventors lived such as Laycock Abbey for Fox Talbot or the streets of Paris for Daguerre but the underlying reasons for taking photographs also changed.
 
The inventors were testing the variety of photographs that could be taken and Fox Talbot took scientific specimens, portraits, microscopic samples as well as outdoor shots and when looked at as a body of work they seem to be a catalogue of photographic possibilities. By 1844 when he took the photographs for his book "Sun Pictures in Scotland" a different process was taking place - the images of Scottish landscapes and buildings are no longer a catalogue of possibilities but rather have the objective of recording the topographical locations and buildings associated with Walter Scott. The switch, which took place in less than five years, was from a scientific test of what could be achieved with photography to its application to preserve visual memories. Early British landscape photographers can be divided into several distinct types:

• The inventors: Fox Talbot, Frederick Scott Archer and John Dillwyn Llewelyn all experimented with different chemical processes and perfected new techniques.
• The commercialists: Francis Frith, George Washington Wilson and James Valentine all evolved from takers of topographical views and architectural details into commercial companies of significance leaving behind vast archives. There are occasional gems amongst these photographs but most have little artistic merit when looked at today - one of the advantages of the Internet is that you can view the archives on-line and George Washington Wilson's archive is at The University of Aberdeen and that of James Valentine and the company Valentines of Dundee Ltd is at the University of St. Andrews.
• The hobbyists: These include the inventor John Dillwyn Llewelyn, the solicitor Henry White (1819-1903) who was widely respected for his landscapes in the 1850's and Lady Clementina Hawarden who is better remembered for her portraits but she also did some sensitive landscapes. As a group they did not seek financial rewards for their work but could be seen as talented early adopters.

The boundaries between these types are blurred as almost everybody who took up photography in the early years could be classed as an educated person of means who could afford to indulge in a hobby. They were people of standing in British society during a period when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were interested in and promoted scientific and technological achievement. Photographers like George Washington Wilson and Roger Fenton photographed the royal family and their estates. Francis Bedford was an artist who exhibited his drawings at Royal Academy in London before taking up photography and later he photographed the royal collections and accompanied the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) on his 1862 tour of the Middle East. There were undoubtedly talented British landscape photographers between 1839 and 1860 and there are examples by John Dillwyn Llewelyn taken at his home at Penllergare near Swansea in Wales or works by Roger Fenton that match those of the French landscape photographers. However I feel it would be difficult to argue that as a body of work they equal the artistic sensibilities of the French landscape photographers with their stronger links to painting traditions.  
  
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century three factors came together that made France preeminent in early landscape photography - early technological availability, the artistic perception of landscape painting at the time photography was announced and the talent of the people who took up photography. Within painting there had been a move to paint outdoors and to paint what was there rather than imagined within the studio and this flourished with the Barbizon artists who frequented the Fontainebleau forest near Paris. When photography was announced in 1839 it was a tool that matched their aesthetic needs by recording exactly what was seen.
 
If we look at the photographs of André Giroux (1801-1879) all three factors can be seen working together. André Giroux was the son of Alphonse Giroux who made the first commercial Daguerreotype cameras. He was also a talented landscape artist who won the prestigious "Rome Prize for Historical Landscape" ("Prix de Rome en Paysage Historique") and had painted in Italy in the 1820s at the same time as Camille Corot (1796-1875). With a father who knew how to make cameras and understood photography, a highly refined understanding of capturing the visual essentials of a landscape and artistic ability it is not surprising that his photographs, on which he retouched the glass negatives, should be so remarkable.
 
On Sept 11, 1841 John Goffe Rand was awarded a US patent (No. 2,252) for "Preserving paint (collapsible tube)". This simple invention had a significant effect upon artists as they could now paint conveniently outdoors carrying their pigments in metal tubes. Later movements such as Impression would not have been possible without tube paints and this had an immense, but often overlooked, impact on photography. Many of the early photographers were artists or closely associated with them and therefore as artists went to paint landscapes in the open air so photographers accompanied them. André Giroux was not alone in creating outstanding photographs that capture the balance of the landscape with the eyes of a painter. Within the works of Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq who studied with the painter Delacroix, Charles Marville, Louis-Rémy Robert, Camille Silvy and others there are photographs that pull one in to share the experience of the moment.  
  
Throughout Europe there were photographers taking topographical views for example Hermann Krone (1827-1916) who was born at Breslau in Silesia. He took a wide variety of scientific photographs but also an early series of landscapes from 1853 onwards of Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) to the east of Dresden and in 1872 he produced the Königs-Album (Kings Album) that contained views of the 142 towns and cities of Saxony. These are important as early record shots of the areas concerned but do not have the artistic merits of the best of the early French and English landscape photographers. In 1858 Charles Clifford, amn Englishman living in Spain from 1852, published Voyages en Espagne and had an ability with monuments and landscapes.
 
At the University of Bergen in Norway there are the extensive archives of Knud Knudsen (1832-1915) who took the landscapes of his country throughout his extensive career but is a rare image that surpasses being historically interesting.