By FW Champion
1928

Frederick Walter Champion (24 August 1893, Surrey – 21 April 1970, Scotland) was a British forester, worked in British India and East Africa and is considered the 'Father of Camera Trap Photography'. In the UK and India he became famous in the 1920s as one of the first wildlife photographers and conservationists.

After returning from the war, he joined the Imperial Forestry Service in the United Provinces of India and became Deputy Conservator of Forests. Owing to his experiences during the war, he abhorred shooting and killing and blisteringly criticised sport hunting. He preferred shooting wildlife with a camera in the Sivalik Hills and pioneered camera trapping: in the 1920s he developed cameras triggered by tripwires. Using a flashlight as well, he obtained dozens of remarkable night-time photographs, which are among the first of wild tigers, leopards, sloth bears, dholes and other wildlife. He recognized that with good photographs of tigers, it was possible to tell individuals apart by their different stripe patterns.

200mm x 260mm x 42mm

R1,000