Equipped with a dark room aboard HMS Challenger, photographers were able to develop and print images soon after they were taken.

Wild's contribution to the expedition's reports was Thalassa, An Essay on the Depth, Temperature and Currents of the Ocean, and for which he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zürich.

Having been turned down repeatedly by New Zealand in his quest for work, he managed to eke out a living in Melbourne by giving lectures in modern languages and literature at Trinity College, supplemented by acting as matriculation examiner in French and German, and moonlighting as secretary and artist.

His skill in producing accurate images was also noticed by Walter Baldwin Spencer, Professor of Biology at Melbourne University, who became Director of the National Museum, and who commissioned Wild to illustrate the Giant Gippsland Earthworm for the Philosophical Society in 1888.

In the same year Wild delivered the inaugural lecture on Anthropology at the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in Sydney.