Capturing Motion: My Life in High Speed Nature Photography

In this fascinating book Stephen Dalton takes the reader on a journey, recounting how he started in photography and how he became fascinated with the idea of photographing insects and birds in flight.When Dalton started to combine his interests in nature and photography, no photographer had succeeded in capturing on film a focused image of an animal in midair.There were no digital cameras, no high-speed film, only primitive flash units powered by a heavy car battery.Colour film took a week or more to be sent away and processed, too late for Dalton to make adjustments to his camera and flash set-up.There were also no publications to learn from. Dalton describes how persistence, hard work and sheer faith that it could be done pushed him to experiment with a variety of methods.Two years of repeated attempts, an understanding of flight mechanics and insight into the art of photography brought success: he captured a sharply focused image of a barn owl leaving its nest.Dalton had created the