portrait painter and professional photographer, was christened Olaf William Blackwood, although he became known as William in Australia. His father’s name was Robert and Olaf William was said to be 'a portrait painter of Swedish-Scots descent’ when he married Sarah, daughter of Obediah West and granddaughter of Thomas West (who had one of the original land grants at Darling Point, Sydney), in St Mark’s Church of England, Darling Point, in 1854. They had nine children.
By 1858 Blackwood had set himself up as a professional photographer in Sydney, his studio being at 16 William Street, Woolloomooloo. In mid-1858 he took 11 imperial size, wet-plate photographs from the top of Government House which combined to form a large-scale Panorama of Sydney Harbour , the first produced in the colony. Blackwood advertised it in the Sydney Morning Herald on 6 July. In October it was on sale at Edwin Dalton 's Royal Photographic Company in various sizes and formats costing from 2s 6d upwards. One version is included in one of Blackwood’s three surviving albums (Mitchell Library). The Herald was ecstatic about the panorama: 'the largest photographs we have yet seen taken in this city’. They were considered:
“not merely faultless, but super-excellent … We understand that Mr. Blackwood has fitted up an apparatus with which he can travel to any part of the town or country, and fix his views on the glass upon the spot the instant they have been taken. It is his intention to continue the series of views of the streets and public buildings of Sydney, copies of which can be multiplied to almost any extent. His landscape pieces are achievements of the photographic art, and at once stamp Mr. Blackwood as an artist of considerable merit.”
Blackwood published another album in 1858 consisting of photographs of Sydney’s nine banks. At the request of the architect of the building, Edmund Blacket , he produced a photograph of the University of Sydney in 1859 to commemorate its Grand Colonial Festival. He continued to photograph other Sydney buildings, including St James’s Church and the Australian Subscription Library. He introduced the carte-de-visite portrait format to Sydney in 1859 – another colonial first, according to Davies and Stanbury.
Between about 1860 and 1862 Blackwood worked in partnership with Henry Goodes at 328 George Street, Sydney. They contributed eight photographic views to the New South Wales section of the 1862 London International Exhibition. Later Blackwood worked with James Walker , announcing the formation of this partnership in the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 November 1862. They worked together at Walker’s Pitt Street studio until 1864.
Blackwood died at Summer Hill on 16 February 1897 and was buried in the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery.
