[2][3] He spent the next few years recuperating in Kingston upon Thames, where he took up professional photography, learned the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions.

Muybridge is known for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

In his later years, Muybridge gave many public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences, travelling frequently in England and Europe to publicise his work in cities such as London and Paris.

[5] He also edited and published compilations of his work (some of which are still in print today), which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography.

He visited the new state capital, Sacramento, as an agent selling illustrated Shakespeare books in April 1856,[21] and soon after settled at 113 Montgomery Street in San Francisco.

[34] Arthur P. Shimamura, an experimental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has speculated that Muybridge suffered substantial injuries to the orbitofrontal cortex that probably also extended into the anterior temporal lobes, which may have led to some of the emotional, eccentric behaviour reported by friends in later years, as well as freeing his creativity from conventional social inhibitions.

Eventually, he felt well enough to travel to England, where he received medical care from Sir William Gull (who was also personal physician to Queen Victoria), and was prescribed abstinence of meat, alcohol, and coffee for over a year.

[2][3]: 3  However, while outdoors photography might have helped in getting some fresh air, dragging around heavy equipment and working with chemicals in a dark room did not comply with the prescriptions for rest that Gull preferred to offer.

[40] He wrote a letter to his uncle Henry, who had immigrated to Sydney (Australia), with details of the patents and he also mentioned having to visit Europe for business for several months.

[20] Muybridge converted a lightweight two-wheel, one-horse carriage into a portable darkroom to carry out his work,[41] and with a logo on the back dubbed it "Helios' Flying Studio".

An 1868 advertisement stated a wide scope of subjects: "Helios is prepared to accept commissions to photograph Private Residences, Ranches, Mills, Views, Animals, Ships, etc., anywhere in the city, or any portion of the Pacific Coast.

[15] An article published in 2017 and an expanded book document that Muybridge heavily edited and modified his photos, inserting clouds or the moon, even adding volcanos to his pictures for artistic effects.

[28] During the construction of the San Francisco Mint in 1870–1872, Muybridge made a series of images of the building's progress, documenting changes over time in a fashion similar to time-lapse photography.

[53] In comparing the styles of the two photographers, Watkins has been called "a classicist, making serene, stately pictures of a still, eternal world of beauty", while Muybridge was "a romantic who sought out the uncanny, the unsettling, the uncertain".

[15] In 1868, Muybridge was commissioned by the US government to travel to the newly acquired US territory of Alaska to photograph the Tlingit Native Americans, occasional Russian inhabitants, and dramatic landscapes.

[57] In 1872, the former governor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for a portfolio depicting his mansion and other possessions, including his racehorse Occident.

[59] In 1873, Muybridge managed to use a single camera to shoot a small and very fuzzy picture of the racehorse Occident running, at Union Park racetrack in Sacramento.

[61][62] The Daily Alta California reported that Muybridge first exhibited magic lantern projected slides of the photographs at the San Francisco Art Association on 8 July 1878.

Muybridge intervened several times and believed the affair was over when he sent Flora to stay with a relative and Larkyns found a job at a mine near Calistoga, California.

[2][3] During the trial, Muybridge undercut his own insanity case by indicating that his actions were deliberate and premeditated, but he also showed impassive indifference and uncontrolled explosions of emotion.

Shortly after his acquittal in February 1875, Muybridge left the United States on a previously planned 9-month photography trip to Central America, now acting as a "working exile".

[8][69] Today, the court case and transcripts are important to historians and forensic neurologists, because of the sworn testimony from multiple witnesses regarding Muybridge's state of mind and past behaviour.

[78] However, as a result of Muybridge not being credited in the book, the Royal Society of Arts withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion studies in photography, and refused to publish a paper he had submitted, accusing him of plagiarism.

[79][5] The vast majority of Muybridge's work at this time was done at a special sunlit outdoor studio, due to the still-bulky cameras and relatively slow photographic emulsion speeds then available.

[49] He used banks of 12 custom-made cameras to photograph professors, athletes, students, disabled patients from the Blockley Almshouse (located next to Penn at the time), and local residents, all in motion.

[81] In 1888, the University of Pennsylvania donated an album of Muybridge's photographs, which featured students and Philadelphia Zoo animals, to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid II, who had a keen interest in photography.

This gift may have helped to secure permissions for the excavations that scholars from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology later pursued in the Ottoman region of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), notably at the site of Nippur.

According to an exhibition at Tate Britain, "His influence has forever changed our understanding and interpretation of the world, and can be found in many diverse fields, from Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending a Staircase and countless works by Francis Bacon, to the blockbuster film The Matrix and Philip Glass's opera The Photographer".

[49] The Philadelphia Museum of Art also holds a large collection of Muybridge material, including hundreds of collotype prints, gelatin internegatives, glass plate positives, phenakistoscope cards, and camera equipment, totalling just under 800 objects.

[109] Muybridge's influence extended to many artists and beyond, including efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth, entrepreneur Walt Disney, Nobel-Prize chemist Ahmed Zewail, and the International Society of Biomechanics.