How the West was shot – by photography pioneer Lora Webb Nichols With a camera that granted her entry into a working man’s world of cowboys and miners, Nichols was as much a pioneer as those she pictured A self-portrait by Webb Nichols with her dog, Duke, 1899 Credit: Lora Webb Nichols Archive Because Bert Oldman was sweet on Lora Webb Nichols, he gave her a camera for her 16th birthday, in 1899. Oldman was one of several hundred miners drawn to Encampment, Wyoming – then just four ramshackle wooden buildings and a huddle of tents – after a rich copper strike in the nearby Sierra Madre in 1897; Nichols was his wife-to-be.