Eric John Hosking OBE (2 October 1909 – 22 February 1991) was an English photographer noted for his bird photography.
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.
During his lecturing career, many tens of thousands of people were entertained with lantern slides of British bird life.
[1] The many comments made by people from Hosking's generation suggest that this form of education had a profound effect on many, some of whom went on to establish the broad spectrum of modern conservation.
Every step of the picture taking process was totally manual, and success relied on in-depth knowledge, experience and calculation.
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.
[1] 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.
Its stated aims are to sponsor ornithological research and other natural history projects through the media of photography, art and writing.
[2] The Trust has paid out over 30 bursaries to projects varying from the development of a reliable ageing criterion for British storm petrels to the production of a short animation about the spoon-billed sandpiper.
In his autobiography, An Eye for a Bird, he wrote of his strong objection to "unscrupulous methods", "dishonest photography" and the objectionable practice of passing off as 'wild and free' an animal that was neither, a position that the competition maintains today.
Before her death in November 2005, Dorothy had moved to the Suffolk village of Debenham, to be near her youngest son, David, who carries on the family tradition of wildlife photography.