Roger’s Cameras: No Bird Unseen

Roger Tory Peterson didn’t believe in drawing a bird he hadn’t seen. And so, he travelled. As a child he wandered Jamestown, from the Chadakoin to Swede Hill, in search of birds to study. As an adult, he visited zoos, city parks, and nature preserves; he boarded ships, trains, planes, and even rode burros in order to study birds in their natural habitats. And everywhere he went, Roger took photographs. He toted cameras, tripods, special camouflage he would wrap around himself to blend into wooded areas, flashbulbs, filters, lenses, and hundreds of rolls of film. He produced hundreds of thousands of photographs during his lifetime, but the story of his travels is also told by his equipment. Camera boxes sport Cunard cruise line stickers; his tripods and lenses sport nicks and scratches from time far and afield. Of crouching, waiting, and finally snapping the proper photo.

“I’ve always enjoyed photography because there’s an immediacy to it,” Roger would say. “It’s like hunting, but you’re not taking life. You’re recording life. Bird photography isn’t just point and shoot. You have to see a picture and compose it. It also has an ethical component because you’re intruding on an animal. A good nature photographer practically lives with the animal until the animal accepts him.”