James Blaine Shackelford (20 September 1886 – 5 August 1969) was a cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

 who photographed Frank Buck

Frank Buck (animal collector)

Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...

’s film, Jacaré

Jacare (film)

Jacaré was a film made in 1942 of James Dannaldson’s expedition to the Amazon.Clyde E. Elliott, Charles E. Ford and James Dannaldson led the film crew, which shot some 260,000 feet of film on the lower reaches of the Amazon River in Spring 1942...

  Born James B. Shackelford in Wichita, Kansas

Wichita, Kansas

Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...

, he was the son of Joel M. Shackelford. Young James grew up in the home of a guardian, Jerome Brooks, a farmer, in Enid, Oklahoma

Enid, Oklahoma

Enid is a city in Garfield County, Oklahoma, United States. In 2010, the population was 49,379, making it the ninth largest city in Oklahoma. It is the county seat of Garfield County. Enid was founded during the opening of the Cherokee Outlet in the Land Run of 1893, and is named after Enid, a...

. James B. Shackelford died in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

.

Career

Shackelford was a cinematographer for Roy Chapman Andrews

Roy Chapman Andrews

Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...

, an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 explorer, adventurer, naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 and director of the American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...

. He accompanied Andrews on a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert

Gobi Desert

The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...

 and Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

. The expeditions made important discoveries and brought the first-known fossil dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 eggs

Dinosaur egg

Dinosaur eggs are represented today as fossils. They represent the product of egg laying activity and can offer clues as to how dinosaurs behaved. In some cases the embryonic dinosaur is preserved within the eggshell, and can be studied....

 to the museum.

In 1933, Shackelford and George Dromgold

George Dromgold

George C. Dromgold was an actor and writer, who wrote a book about his South Seas exploration.-Early years:...

 traveled to the Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...

 and Papua, spending three months at Fiji

Fiji

Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

. At Suva

Suva

Suva features a tropical rainforest climate under the Koppen climate classification. The city sees a copious amount of precipitation during the course of the year. Suva averages 3,000 mm of precipitation annually with its driest month, July averaging 125 mm of rain per year. In fact,...

, they observed and analyzed fire-walking. Dromgold wrote a book, Two Lugs on a Lugger

Lugger

A lugger is a class of boats, widely used as traditional fishing boats, particularly off the coasts of France, Scotland and England. It is a small sailing vessel with lugsails set on two or more masts and perhaps lug topsails.-Defining the rig:...

, with photographs by Shackelford, describing their adventures.

Shackelford was cinematographer for the film crew of Clyde E. Elliott

Clyde E. Elliott

-Filmography:* Jacare * Booloo * The Devil Tiger * Bring 'Em Back Alive * Western Ways * A Winter's Tale * The City * Le voyageur * A Bit Old Fashioned * My Barefoot Boy...

, Charles E. Ford

Charles E. Ford

-External links:* Charles E. Ford on the Internet Movie Database * Reviews of Jacare * *...

 and James Dannaldson

James Dannaldson

James Melven Dannaldson starred in the Frank Buck film Jacaré.-Early life:Dannaldson was the son of James Jerrmiel Dannaldson and Lulu Belgium Rola Hiatt. Young James...

, which shot some 260,000 feet of film on the lower reaches of the Amazon River in Spring 1942. The film became Frank Buck

Frank Buck (animal collector)

Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...

's popular movie Jacaré

Jacare (film)

Jacaré was a film made in 1942 of James Dannaldson’s expedition to the Amazon.Clyde E. Elliott, Charles E. Ford and James Dannaldson led the film crew, which shot some 260,000 feet of film on the lower reaches of the Amazon River in Spring 1942...

. The group spent three and a half months at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, usually within a day's journey of the city, so that they could return to civilization for the night. The company's most primitive adventure occurred on Marajó

Marajó

Marajó is an island located at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. It is part of the state of Pará.- Geography :With a land area of 40,100 km² , which compares to the size of Switzerland, it is the largest island to be completely surrounded by freshwater in the world...

Island, at the mouth of the Amazon, where they spent four weeks. They ran out of imported food and had to subsist for five days on moldy doughnuts filled with small worms and on chickens which seemed to be 90 per cent vulture.

Shackelford's later career included work in The Bells in Old Town (1946, Klockorna i Gamla sta'n was the original Swedish title).