Edward Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was an English Photographer who spent most of his life in the United States. He's most notable for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which is used to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
Muybridge became well known for his Landscape photography , particularly of the Yosmite Valley. He spent must of his later years in San Fransico, California lecturing and demonstrating his photographis work and early motion picture sequence findings.

In 1872 the former governor of California, racehorse owner and business man Leland Stanford hires Muybridge for some Photographic Studies to illustrate whether all of the feet of a horse were off the ground while trotting, and also whether the same technique goes for a horse gallop.

To accomplish his demonstartion he captured images in the form of Silhouttes onti a disk to be viewed on a machine he had invented, which is called a Zoopraxiscpe. He also invented his own high class speed electronic shutter and electro-timer to be used alongside a battery of 24 cameras in his set project.Using all these technologies and the Chronography, which was used to recored the vibration when the camera shutters went down, and therefore recorded the movements to prove that all four of the horse feet came off the ground whilst trotting and Galloping.

Muybridge findings and techniques are what inspired most, if not all pohotographers nowadays.