Modern Approach

The modern approach to visually capture birds has been reformed with the new technology. The camera gains its predominance over the pen or the brush, enabling not only the artists, but more scientists and bird lovers to record moments of birds’ activities.

Title: Bird Studies with a Camera by Frank M. Chapman
Description: The book is an early “textbook” of photographing birds by Frank M. Chapman, an assistant curator of vertebrate zoology in the American Museum of Natural History, published in 1903. Chapman’s book is for a scientific pursuit. He refers bird photographing as a sport and the highest form of hunting, lens to replace guns, for the love and the true spirit of sportsmanship. The cameras Chapman uses and teaches his readers to use are rather antique and technically limited from a modern standpoint. But the images of birds Chapman captured are pioneering. This is also a journal of Chapman’s visits to many bird species, a diary of where and how he approached the birds.