74 Overton a\i> Harper, Bird Photography. [j&h. 



BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE DIRECT COLOR 



PROCESS. 



BY FRANK OVERTON, M.D. AND FRANCIS EA.RPER, 



Many photographs that show the home life of wild birds arc 

 objects o( great interest and beauty, but black and white pictures 

 fail to reveal the most striking of all the characteristics of a bird — 

 its color. Photography affords an almost perfect moans of record- 

 ing- other important characteristics, such as size, shape, and habi- 

 tat; but until recently it has been almost a total failure in record- 

 ing the color of the plumage. 



Hitherto the colors ol birds have been represented by means of 

 paintings and their reproductions or by means of hand-colored 

 lantern slides. Bui bird-painting is an extremely slow and difficult 

 process. The artists who arc capable of adequately portraying 

 birds are surprisingly few in Dumber, and to satisfactorily reproduce 

 the paintings on tin- printed page is almost as difficult as to make 

 the original pictures. Consequently many of the printed pictures 

 in color are merely keys, and few painted portraits, however pleas- 

 ing their composition, arc accurate in every particular. Hand- 

 colored lantern slides are valuable and beautiful, but most of them 

 fail to represent the bird subjects accurately or in desirable detail. 

 Therefore, any additional moans of recording vividly and minutely 

 the natural colors of wild birds is worthy of careful study. Such a 

 means is afforded by the use of the Lumiere autochrome plates. 

 Photographs taken upon these plates are transparencies, having 

 the qualities of good lantern slides, with the additional quality of 

 showing the colors in their natural tones and in pleasing detail. 



An autochrome photograph may be reproduced by engraving 

 ami printing in the same way that a painting may be reproduced. 

 Hut an autochrome is much fuller of microscopic detail than a 

 painting done by hand, and this detail is too line to be brought 

 out by the engraver's art at the present time. An autochrome, 

 therefore, cannot be reproduced satisfactorily upon the printed 

 page unless it happens to be made up of masses of color without 



