Pillsbury brought awareness of the natural world to tourists in ways which moved them. Free nature films and the flower identification cards sold at the Studio were part of the campaign Pillsbury carried out. No matter how tight the tourist's budget Pillsbury made sure there were items they could afford to buy so they would remember their connection to the natural world, and Yosemite.
Pillsbury had built the first lapse-time camera in 1912 so people could see with their own eyes the life struggles of the wildflowers, which had been disappearing from the meadows of Yosemite.
When Pillsbury had first bicycled into Yosemite Valley in 1895, still a student at Stanford University, the meadows had stood waist-deep in species of wildflowers. By 1912 the varieties still present were shrinking. The U.S. Cavalry, which managed the Park, was mowing the meadows to provide fodder for their horses.
Pillsbury was determined to persuade those in authority to preserve what was left. After a showing of one of his wildflower films at a National Conference for Park Superintendents in October of 1912, the move for preservation began.
These were films Pillsbury also used later, when he lectured to people up and down California and across the United States, Canada, England, and the South Seas.
And on March 15, 1926 Pillsbury lectured at a dinner arranged by Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Hubert A. Work in honor of President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge at the Willard Hotel in Washington D. C.
The Washington Star wrote, " Nothing has stood out more distinctly than the dinner given by Dr. Work a week ago at the Willard. The guests numbered about 70, and the dinner being followed by colored pictures showing the life of a flower from its first seeding until it bloomed into full-grown beauty and then dropped its petals." Grace Coolidge was quoted as saying, "she was profoundly impressed with the Pictures."
Pillsbury lectured to the National Geographic Society and at every major Town Hall Forum. He spoke regularly on every major campus in the United States about the natural world. Pillsbury was the first, others were lead by his example.
Ansel Adams was touched, moved, changed, by the images of Arthur C. Pillsbury, as his letter says. From 1923 on Ansel frequently accompanied Pillsbury as an assistant while Grandfather photographed the spring, summer, autumn and winter changes in Yosemite National Park.
In 1926 Pillsbury again used film to take the human eye into the living world of the microscopic. Scientists and professors at the University of California, Berkeley, were stunned to see his footage of a cell dividing. These were images which changed our understanding of processes which, until then, had been beyond human vision.
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