Bunny Yeager, probably best known as the photographer of Bettie Page pinups, died at 85. Yeager's agent, Ed Christin said Bunny died at a North Miami hospice where she had been for about a week. The cause was congestive heart failure.

Bunny Yeager, a model turned pin-up photographer helped jump-start the career of pinup icon Bettie Page. Yeager was one of the world's most celebrated photographers of female nudes and near-nudes of the 1950s and 1960s. She helped turn the erotic pinup into high photographic art.

Bunny Yeager began her career as a model. She was one of the most photographed models of the 1940s.  But Yeager wasn't satisfied with being a pretty face, she preferred the view from behind the camera. Yeager took up photography by accident.

She began taking photos of Page in 1954. One of Bunny Yeager's first shots of Bettie Page was a holiday-themed photo of a nude Bettie wearing a Santa hat which she sent to Playboy magazine in 1955. In 2012, Yeager told the London Telegraph "I figured because they were new they might pay attention to an amateur, and that's what happened." A series of photos of Bettie Page in a leopard-print bathing suit standing next to a real cheetah are considered iconic.

Yeager shot everyday women. Her subjects ranged from stay-at-home moms to airline attendants. Yeager made them feel comfortable and got them to peel for the camera. In a 2013 Associate Press interview, she said "They all wanted to model for me because they knew that I wouldn't take advantage of them. And I wouldn't push them to do nude if they didn't want to do nudes. It wasn't a day when nude photography was prevalent."

Yeager was known for bikini photos and nude shoots. She authored several guides to nude photography and self-portraits. Yeager's photography has appeared in Playboy, Cavalier, Escapade, Nugget, Fling, Sunbathing, National Police Gazette and Figure Quarterly. Her self-portraits were turned into a book, "How I Photograph Myself," in 1964.

Bunny Yeager's work slowed in the 1970s but has since enjoyed a renaissance. Recently her work was the subject the "Bunny Yeager: The Legendary Queen of the Pinup" exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in 2010.

Linnea Eleanor Yeager was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania on March 13, 1929.