In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and the income from his photos, Pillsbury, who had just quit his job with the "San Francisco Examiner" to found the Pillsbury Picture Company, was able to fulfill his long-time ambition to buy a studio in Yosemite and purchased the Studio of the Three Arrows later that same year. His background in biology and botany, encouraged by his parents who were both medical doctors, made him aware of the steady reduction in the number and types of wild flowers that blossomed in the meadows there. So in 1912 he built the first lapse-time camera, made the first nature movie showing the dance of a flower raising its face to the sun and managed to persuade the National Park Service to stop the practice of mowing the meadows to produce fodder for their horses.