Eliot Porter was born in 1901 and is the second of five children in an upper-middle-class family in a Chicago suburb.  In 1911, his parents gave him his first camera.  After getting the camera, he immediately challenged himself to photograph birds.  He later enrolled at Harvard, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and a medical degree in 1929.  After graduation, he pursued a full-time career in photography, which was inspired by Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz.  In 1938, Stieglitz showcased some of Porter's photographs in his gallery in New York City.