In 1939, Porter took a group of black-and-white bird photographs to Paul Brooks, an editor at Houghton Mifflin, to see if he might be interested in publishing a book of the work. Brooks was captivated by the images, but he told Porter that they would be much more useful for identification, and thus more marketable, if they were in color.

Kodachrome film had just come onto the market, so Porter taught himself how to use the film and make color prints, developing his own photographic equipment and printing techniques along the way. This image of an Alder Flycatcher and its chicks was one of his first color images and already displays the tonal control and luminous saturation Porter found in the dye imbibition process. Over the next five decades, he built a reputation for producing exquisite color prints that capture the immense variety and beauty of the natural world.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)