Kjell Sandved, 93; nature photographer

Kjell Sandved, a Norwegian publisher who found a second career as a nature photographer for the Smithsonian Institution, capturing closely observed images of butterflies, plants and other forms of life, which he published in a series of books, died Dec. 20 at his home in Washington. He was 93.

He had dementia, said Barbara Badian, a friend and business associate.

Sandved, whose first name was pronounced “Shell,” was a man of singular vision who never did things by half-measure. After compiling and publishing two single-volume encyclopedias on music and art - each more than 1,000 pages in length — he set about compiling another encyclopedia devoted to the natural world.

He was at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in 1960, looking through a cigar box containing a collection of butterflies, when he noticed the letter “F” in the wing of one specimen. He took a photograph, put it above his desk, and soon became consumed with curiosity.

“Not even a calligrapher could have improved on its beauty,” Sandved later wrote. “My mind was made up. I was going to search for the entire alphabet.”

And so began a decadeslong search, as he wondered what else he might see in the wing patterns of the nearly 20,000 species of butterflies across the globe.

Abandoning plans for a comprehensive encyclopedia on nature, Sandved stayed in Washington as a volunteer at the museum.

He redirected his career toward nature photography, teaching himself the craft by trial and error.

“Before I came here, I really wasn’t interested in photography,” he told a Smithsonian employee publication in the 1980s.