In the 1850s, Edouard-Denis Baldus and Gustave Le Gray were among the several photographers working in France who had mastered the relatively new art form of photography and were creating works with distinct pictorial visions and varying techniques. Baldus, at this time, favored using paper negatives and making salt prints, which resulted in subtly toned, atmospheric views. Le Gray, for his part, preferred to use collodion-on-glass negatives to make albumen prints, a process that produced crisper images with a golden-brown hue. Baldus shot the northern port city of Boulogne from the shore so that the jetty, which helped guide ships from the coastline into the port, cuts a dramatic diagonal across the center of the composition. Here, masts are the only visible part of the ships that have been moored to the jetty’s side. In Le Gray’s photograph, in contrast, the ships take center stage, their tall masts silhouetted against the sky and towering over the buildings of the southern port city of Sète.