In the early 20th century, while most conservation relied on hunting, Frederick Walter Champion stood out as a visionary. An ex-army officer and Imperial Forestry Service member, he pioneered wildlife photography in India not with bullets, but with cameras.

Through years of patience and innovation, Champion developed a trip-wire camera trap system in the Kumaon forests. A delicate wire would trigger a flash and camera as a tiger passed an approach avant-garde in both conservation and photography. After eight years of effort, he finally succeeded. His tiger images were published on the front page of The Illustrated London News on October 3, 1925, under the dramatic headline, “A Triumph of Big Game Photography”.

Champion’s method laid the foundation for modern camera trapping, a cornerstone of wildlife conservation worldwide. Today, advanced versions of his technique are used to monitor tiger populations, track their movements, and inform conservation strategies even helping identify individual tigers by their unique stripes.

Champion wasn’t just taking pictures he was redefining humanity’s relationship with wildlife. By choosing observation over destruction, his work helped shift the narrative from domination to protection, ensuring tigers were immortalized not in bullets, but in light, forever changing India’s conservation journey.