Author of "Wild Life at Home: How to Study and Photograph It;" "With Nature and a Camera," etc.
My brother and I were both delighted to see the first number of Bird-Lore, and take the opportunity of congratulating our naturalist and photographic chums across the Atlantic upon having such a practical and highly interesting magazine to help them in their enchanting pursuits. Such a publication would have been a veritable godsend to us when we started our natural history photography.
As we have had a good deal of experience in circumventing the cunning and timidity of the majority of wild creatures living in the British Isles, and the same characteristics in this respect are common to wild animals all the world over, I propose to tell by what means we have secured some of our rarest pictures.
First of all, I ought to explain that we never use anything but a strongly built, half-plate stand camera, fitted with a Dallmeyer stigmatic lens, and an adjustable miniature on the top, which is used as a sort of view-finder when making studies of flying birds and mammals in motion. When fixed in position, and its focus has been set exactly like its working companion beneath it, both are racked out in the same ratio by the screw dominating the larger apparatus which, when charged with a dark slide and stopped down according to the requirements of light and speed of exposure, needs no further attention. When the combination is in use, the photographer focuses with his right hand, and, holding the air ball or reservoir of his pneumatic tube in his left, squeezes it quickly and firmly directly he has achieved a sufficiently clear and strong definition of his object upon the ground glass of the miniature camera. This enables the operator to focus up to the last instant, and to select the best attitude of his "sitter."
We have a silent time-shutter built in behind the lens, and for very rapid work, such as flying bird studies, use a Thornton & Pickard focal plane shutter working up to the thousandth part of a second.
Good apparatus, that will work under almost any conditions with precision and certainty, must be possessed for the achievement of successful natural history work. We use the quickest plates made in the old country for the greater part of our work, although, of course, for still objects full of color, we cannot beat Ilford chromatic plates.