Photo by W.E. Carlin from Nature Portraits: Studies with Pen and Camera of Our Wild Birds, Animals, Fish and Insects, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902. Mansueto: 591.Q205
During the 1890s, technical advances made it practical to photograph birds and other animals in their natural environments for the first time. But faced with the unpredictable realities of photographing in the field, early practitioners struggled to make worthwhile images from the standpoints of art or natural history. The Studio in the Field traces the development of wildlife photography as a popular cultural pursuit, focusing on the innovative techniques and strategies devised to craft pictures that would appear convincingly natural to nineteenth-century audiences.