Did you know who captured the first photograph of a tiger in the wild? Here’s a Twitter thread about it

Over the years we've been wowed by stunning photographs of wild tigers, especially from India 🇮🇳. But who took the first photograph of a tiger in the wild?

Here it is. Shot in 1925. The photographer: An Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer.@RazaKazmi17 pic.twitter.com/gJMMpDd2mx

— Erik Solheim (@ErikSolheim) June 15, 2022

“Over the years we’ve been wowed by stunning photographs of wild tigers, especially from India. But who took the first photograph of a tiger in the wild? Here it is. Shot in 1925. The photographer: An Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer,” tweeted Solheim as he tagged Raza Kazmi, a wildlife historian and conservationist.

Kazmi in his reply to Solheim noted that the first photograph was shot by Frederick Walter Champion, an Indian Forest Service officer, in 1925. He also shared two other photographs of tigers captured by Champion in Kumaon forests.

Who was this IFS officer you ask? Well, he is a name familiar to most conservationists – Frederick Walter Champion, better known as F.W. Champion.

A 1921 batch officer, F.W. Champion served the forests of United Provinces (now UP & Uttarakhand) right until 1947. Unlike most + pic.twitter.com/i64K9ZMeUV

— Raza Kazmi (@RazaKazmi17) June 8, 2022

Kazmi added that the photographs were first published on the front page of The Illustrated London News, a weekly news magazine on October 3, 1925. The headline read, “A Triumph of Big Game Photography: The First Photographs of Tigers in the Natural Haunts.”

The “camera trap photography”, a standard method used for tiger census and monitoring across India, is attributed to Champion, Kazmi’s tweet said. Champion christened it as “trip-wire photography” where a wire was concealed on the animal’s pathway and connected to the camera. The flashes went off simultaneously when the wild animal stumbled upon it and thus capturing the photograph, as per Kazmi’s tweet.

These 3 tiger images, taken in the Kumaon forests, were first published on the Front Page of the prestigious 'The Illustrated London News' on Oct 3, 1925. The accompanying headline read:

"A Triumph of Big Game Photography: The First Photographs of Tigers in the Natural Haunts" pic.twitter.com/FGd4DBGLzu

— Raza Kazmi (@RazaKazmi17) June 8, 2022

“These photographs are quite unique, no satisfactory photographs ever having been taken before, to my knowledge, of tigers in their native haunts,” wrote Champion in a letter that accompanied them.

What does the tiger think about it? “The flash is so sudden that he probably takes it for a flash of lightning,” wrote Champion in one of the published captions in The Illustrated London News.

Champion christened the photography technique that got him the first images of tigers in the wild as "trip-wire photography", where a tiger (or any other animal) tripped on a wire carefully concealed below his usual walking path resulting in him taking his own image, usually by +

— Raza Kazmi (@RazaKazmi17) June 8, 2022

been taken before, to my knowledge, of tigers in their native haunts." What does the tiger himself think about it? "The flash is so sudden," says Mr. Champion, "that he probably takes it for a flash of lightning."

Champion's technique would be further refined from the late 80s +

— Raza Kazmi (@RazaKazmi17) June 8, 2022

fantastic books titled "With a Camera in Tigerland" (1927) and "Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow" (1933), with dozens of stunning portraits of Indian wildlife taken in their natural habitat. These inspired many hunters, including Jim Corbett, to give up their guns for cameras! pic.twitter.com/vhHh4ApfGM

— Raza Kazmi (@RazaKazmi17) June 8, 2022

The British man had served as a forest officer in the then United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand now) during the 1900s and it took him eight years to capture the photographs, according to one of Kazmi’s tweets.

Twitter users found the long thread informative. A user commented, “Lovely thread! Thanks for sharing :). I’d heard of champion through corbett’s works, but didn’t know he was the father of camera trap photography!”