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Eric John Hosking OBE (2 October 1909 – 22 February 1991) was an English photographer noted for his bird photography. ==Life and career== Eric Hosking OBE, Hon FRPS, was a pioneering wildlife photographer and the first professional photographer to make a living predominantly from photographing birds. He was born on 2 October 1909 in Chelsea, London. His family moved to Crouch End, north London, during WWI. Hosking loved London, and although he travelled greatly in Britain and abroad he never moved away from his north London home, where he developed his natural history photographic business. Hosking died suddenly on 22 February 1991, aged 81, shortly after returning from a Kenyan safari. Starting out on a career in wildlife photography in 1929 was a bold move. Bird photography was the pastime of a select few who mainly took photographs of birds for their own interest, or to circulate among fellow enthusiasts and in clubs, like the Zoological Photographic Club, founded in 1899. With no financial backing other than understanding parents, who would lend the money necessary to buy film, Hosking began to develop a market for his wildlife photographs. His working year was divided; he photographed during the spring and summer, where birds were mainly photographed at the nest because, as explained below, pre-focussing was necessary. In autumn and winter, articles could be written for magazines like ''Picture Post'' and ''Country Life''; and book ideas were developed and then illustrated with high numbers of good quality images, some taken using the new Kodachrome colour film, making these books very desirable. Some books like ''Birds of the Day'', published by Collins in 1944, sold more than 50,000 copies. The turning point in Hosking's career came through an accident which happened on 12 May 1937. Returning to a tawny owl hide late at night, he was struck in the face by the owl, with its claw penetrating his left eye. The resulting infection meant choosing between losing one eye or probably going blind. The eye was removed and the ensuing publicity appeared in all the national newspapers, where his photographs were in great demand. As soon as Hosking was fit he returned to the hide to continue taking pictures.〔Bryan Sage, "A photographer in hiding", ''New Scientist'', 27 September 1979, pp. 954–957; (here ) at Google Books.〕 Evenings were often taken up with lectures. It was not unusual for Hosking to give 100 or more in a year, to audiences ranging from three to 3,000. During his lecturing career, many tens of thousands of people were entertained with lantern slides of British bird life.〔 The many comments made by people from Hosking's generation suggest that this form of education had a profound effect on many, of whom some went on to establish the broad spectrum of modern conservation. To fully appreciate Hosking's black and white bird photographs taken during the 1930s and 1940s, it is useful to understand how difficult it was to take them. Every step of the picture taking process was totally manual and largely guesswork. Without through-the-lens viewing, the camera was pre-focussed to where the subject was expected to be. The exposure was manually calculated, working out the best F stop and shutter speed combination and hoping that the light intensity did not change before the picture was taken. The light sensitivity of the film was very low, about ISO 10. (Today ISO 400 is normal.) The emulsion was often on a fragile glass base. Only one picture could be taken before reloading. The film holders could only be loaded in complete darkness. It was quite common to only have 12 exposures for a day's photography. The glass negative had to be developed in the darkroom at a later date and then printed as a positive print. Since Hosking's death in 1991, the process has changed beyond recognition. However, throughout his 60-year career he was always keen to embrace new technology. With Cyril Newberry, he was the first to see the potential of flashbulbs for photographing nocturnal birds, when they came on the market in the mid 1930s. In the late 1940s and again with Newberry, he was the first person to use electronic flash to record birds flying. His pictures taken with this new lighting showed people images of birds never seen before.〔 It is possible to plot the growth in membership of organisations like the RSPB and the interest in conservation in general with the increasing availability of lavishly illustrated books, magazines and more recently television. Most of this growth took place during Hosking's lifetime. In her foreword to ''Classic Birds'', a pictorial tribute to Hosking's work, Miriam Rothschild wrote: Eric Hosking brought birds into all our lives. He opened our eyes to the beauty of their world, their grace and fascination. He probably achieved more for avian conservation than any other naturalist of our day. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eric Hosking」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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