FIJI NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 July 1930, Page 6

FIJI NEWS

UNDER-WATER PHOTOGRAPHY

AMERICAN [‘'WIZARD’S” WORK

SUVA, June 30,

Mr'Arthur 0. Pillsbury, known in America as the “Camera Wizard,” is visiting Fiji for three months, with the, object of taking pictures, fixed and movie, of local flowers, plants, fish, corals etc. He photographs' plant life from the germination of the seed to the full blossoming or fruiting. He shows the pollenisation of a flower, showing the intermingling of the male and female nucleii and the rounding up of new seeds, and so gives the complete cycle of the life of the plant, which will take perhaps -only three minutes to reproduce on the screen. Besides photographing plant life,' Mr Pillsbury goes down into the sea, clothed merely in his bathing suit, with a large brass helmet on his head, and calmly takes a photographic"record of all that happens within his ken while below. He has many brass cameras, which he has perfected himself.. They work splendidly at any depth.' Air is pumped into, the helmet from a dinghy overhead. This keeps the water down to about his. chin,] which lie smilingly remarks is quite sufficient for his purpose. •' ; " '' “ When he saw ’ the Bequa •'fire walkers last week Mr Pillsbury said theirs was the most wohderful ceremonial he had ever seen, in over a quarter of a century’s experience of pageants. “The most wonderful I have ever seen or imagined,-” lie repeated; ■ ;

Mr Pillsbury on October 7th. will start a 25 weeks’ lecturing tour in the U.S'.A. but hopes to visit New Zealand and. Australia later. His next term of research will be in Dr McDonald’s cancer research laboratory in the University of Pennsylvania, where he proposes to examine by photography the effect of drugs of various kinds upon cancerous cells.