Life and work
Dalton was born in Surrey in 1937 [1] and from a young age was an enthusiast for nature and photography. [4] His father, a Royal Air Force officer, had been a bird photographer, and he had a godfather who collected butterflies, moths, and beetles. [5] In the early 1960s [3] he took a full-time photography diploma at London's Regent Street Polytechnic, about which he later recalled, "I had some of the happiest days of my life studying something I became fascinated by". [2]
Dalton's first published article was in Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society. He went on to supply images to the Natural History Picture Agency (NHPA) run by the entomologist L. Hugh Newman, whom he had met one day while out chasing wildlife with his camera. [3] Later, when Newman retired, Dalton bought the business, and his NHPA became the UK's premier nature photography library. Dalton sold the agency in 2006. [2]
Dalton started his work on insect photography in the early 1970s, before infrared beams or lasers, using a custom-made arrangement of lenses and mirrors, and a custom-made high-speed shutter. [5] [6] Working with an electronics specialist he devised a flash tube/capacitor combination which provided the required combination of high-power flash and extremely short flash duration. After two years of experimentation he was able for the first time to obtain sharp photographs of insects in flight. [2]
Dalton's first full-colour book, Borne on the Wind (1975) included photographs that showed for the first time insects captured in free flight. [5]
Dalton continues to live with his wife in the farmhouse in Sussex where most of his work has been done. [2] His latest book, My Wood (2017) is a study of a wood he has owned since 1998. [7]
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