The friends who visited us on holidays helped make the long camera, and it was made at three separate times, an eight-foot length at a time. When the creature is very small I use the twenty-four-foot length, but when it is large the twelve or eight-foot one. Each length fits into the one in front of it and is covered with black cloth to make it tight.
The taking of the photographs is not, however, the hardest work of monster photographing, although perhaps the hottest, for in summer it is no joke to swelter under a focusing cloth for half an hour at a time, and the focusing itself is hard on the eyes. It is the mounting of the beasts which wears upon one’s nerves, and here is where the woman’s skill comes, for Mrs. Fairchild learned the art of insect taxidermy and many of the most lifelike photographs in the book were mounted by her.
It has been a source of keen satisfaction to find, upon showing the results to professional entomologists, that many of them did not realize that the insects were not alive when photographed. But, although they were not alive, they had just recently been put to sleep with ether, for we soon discovered that to get a lifelike photograph one must photograph a monster at once, within half an hour after death, the sooner the better.
Many ways of mounting were tried, but none were so successful as the following: Cover the top of a small block of wood with a thin, even coating of paraffin or ordinary candle wax by letting the drippings of the candle fall upon it. Pick a large leaf and turn its upper surface down upon the wax, before it cools, and let it stick there; this will give a natural looking ground for the insect to stand upon. Hold the insect over the block of wood and arrange the legs in as natural a position as you can with a long needle or fine dental tool. Then fasten each foot in place by heating the needle in the candle flame and pricking a hole in the leaf just under each foot so that the wax will come up through the leaf and hold it fast.
This mounting is not so simple as it seems, and, until one has actually experienced it, he can have no idea of the perversity of these six-legged beasts. The way the contracting muscles of a grasshopper’s back legs will pull the other four legs loose, or the way the hornet will refuse to hold its head up, or the way long flexible antennæ will droop are exasperations which lead straight to profanity, unless one is very careful.
The whole thing is a game of quickness, ingenuity and patient skill, for so many things must be watched at once. The wilting insect cannot wait, the sunlight shifts, clouds drift across the sun and then, just as everything is in readiness, a breeze springs up which stirs the creature’s wings and the whole thing has to be given up.
The pioneer in this field of photography is Dr. N. A. Cobb, for it is he who first showed what the face of a fly looks like. His suggestions are what first encouraged me to take up the work, although the method finally used by me is quite different from that which he employed. I substituted the long horizontal camera and the long focus lens for his vertical bellows and short focus lens, believing that for larger creatures I get a greater depth of focus and more lifelike appearance.
After my first mild success, that critical period beyond which so many experiments never go, three friends came to the rescue with their enthusiastic approval and encouragement and I desire that their names be connected with this book which they have helped to make, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell and Mr. Barbour Lathrop.
