io Photography for the Sportsman Naturalist 



tends to cast a doubt, in the minds of those who 

 cannot detect the real from the false, over all the 

 products of the nature workers, and so I say that 

 the men who do these things are a hinderance to 

 the advancement of nature photography. 



I remember once seeing a lady looking at a 

 photograph of mine that happened to be in an 

 exhibition. It was a picture of an old bird feed- 

 ing her young, and the exposure had been made 

 at just the happy moment when she was in the 

 very act of giving the food to one of the fledg- 

 lings. It is one of my favorite photographs of all 

 those which I have taken, and it cost me some 

 four hours of patient waiting to obtain. Naturally 

 it rather disgusted me to hear the lady exclaim to 

 a companion, " Oh ! I know how that was done ; 

 the birds were stuffed and wired to the branch." 

 Perhaps I should have immediately corrected her 

 and pointed out to her the reasons why it could 

 not have been a stuffed bird, but would she have 

 thanked me for doing so ? I think not. So I 

 sat down instead and moralized to myself on the 

 futility of striving for the best results when those 

 results received no more praise or commendation 

 than almost worthless ones. 



But it is worth while to do your best work and 

 always to attempt to make your photographs from 

 living wild subjects. They are the only ones that 

 have any real value, and not everybody in the 



