Happy Wild Wednesday! It’s a safe bet that I’m kicking off most calendar years lately experiencing winter in Japan and photographing the abundant wildlife in the Honshu and Hokkaido regions. This past year was no different as I captured more images for Wild Lives.
Preorder your signed copy of Wild Lives today!
This past week has been Polar Bear Week – observed during the fall polar bear migration to Churchill, Manitoba. Here the bears await the winter season and the cold that will freeze-over Hudson Bay, granting the bears access to hunt seals. One of the symptoms of a changing climate has been a shortened ice season. This provides an opportunity to photograph the bears with their stark white fur against darker backgrounds than the ice and snow we are used to seeing.
This was a great trip as several of the bears turned out to be real characters, mugging for the camera and putting on a show for us. Visiting Churchill is always unique experience. This is a town that exist on the fringe where the frozen north pole meets the rest of the earth, that has learned to co-exist with a local bear population that at times rivals the number of people living in the area.
Enjoy the photos!
Wild Wednesday continues with a recent trip to Glacier Bay. We try to run this one every other year or so, and we’ve been fortunate to work with great people on the ground and on the water in Alaska. This time around we were treated to epic breaching whales, sometimes two at a time. Great company, seafood as fresh as it gets, plentiful wildlife, and beautiful Alaskan vistas – it’s the complete package!
We’ll be back here in 2024 – sign up to reserve your spot on this exclusive photo tour before it fills up!
Preorder your signed copy of Wild Lives today!
I recently sat down once again with Parimal Deshpande for an episode of Earth Is Our Witness – in which I was the subject rather than the Artist-In-Residence. We’ll be releasing the episode in its entirety this holiday season. Until then, enjoy this segment on photographing wildlife in Africa as I discuss a variety of subjects ranging from conservation to technique – and stay tuned for more as we approach the release of Wild Lives!
Don’t forget to follow Earth Is Our Witness on Youtube, Instagram and Facebook for more amazing photographs and the stories behind them.
Happy Friday! The Grand Teton workshop is a wrap & it was fantastic, to say the least. Never before have we had such great luck with finding wildlife, bears in particular. We were blessed by the presence of Grizzly 610 and her three second-year cubs. Not only is 610 a hero mother, she is a tough survivor—in early October she was struck by a car, but came out of it OK. Born in 2006, She is a famous bear with her own Instagram and X accounts with thousands of followers (including me). Bison abounded, moose were off foraging in the lakes and willow thickets, and birdlife was all aflutter. Of course, the landscapes were breathtaking, with robust fall color.
All-in-all, a fantastic workshop full of variety and most importantly, great company. Check out what’s coming up this spring and take a trip with us!
A while back I went to Thailand in hopes of capturing the millions of bats that erupt from caves every evening, forming an hour-long stream of the furry fliers. My goal was to capture sharp images of plentiful bats to form patterns, and with the latest camera technology – mission accomplished. I can’t wait to see these printed in WILD LIVES, which releases in just about a month – preorder your copy today!
Happy Halloween week!
https://youtu.be/WODKH-YccMA
It’s another WILD Wednesday! Wild Lives will be published on November 28th, and there’s still plenty of time to pre-order your signed copy. Until the book’s release, we’ll be celebrating Wild every Wednesday with new behind-the-scenes footage and stories.
This week, I’m highlighting the location where the cover of Wild was captured – Katmai, Alaska. I lead tours in this location annually, and yet I always manage to come away with something different! It’s been an incredible experience to have been coming here for so long and seeing recognizable juvenile bears mature into adults and have cubs of their own. It should be noted that much of this video was shot on an iphone in 4K and is cropped in a bit making the animals appear quite close. Always keep a safe distance between yourself and any large animal! Even in the dramatic cover of Wild Lives, where my demise looks imminent, I’m a comfortable distance away shooting with a telephoto lens, and this bear is focused on charging for fish – not hunting photographers!
Books arrive next month – time to do some arm-stretches before the signing begins!
Welcome to the first of several WILD Wednesdays. Each Wednesday up until the official publishing date of Wild Lives on November 28th, I’ll be previewing the book with some behind-the-scenes footage from a handful of the many locations I visited to capture images for this massive, beautiful book – and I can’t wait to share it with everyone!
This week I’m sharing footage captured in Ladakh, India where we set about locating the elusive, legendary snow leopard. While there are some easier ways to capture this cunning cat, I wanted to ensure the photos I captured were indeed ‘wild’, and not an opportunity I would be sharing with numerous other tourists and photographers. This meant shooting from a distance. Fortunately the latest lens, software, and printing technology allowed for the creation of sharp images that both emphasized these great cats as well as their place in the rocky environments where they hunt.
Enjoy the video and tune in next Wednesday for more behind the scenes of Wild Lives. For fans of Tequila Time and Earth Is Our Witness, Parimal and myself have a special episode of Earth Is Our Witness in store for you as well! While you’re here, don’t forget to pre-order your signed copy!
I arrived home from my most recent trip this past Sunday and received an incredible birthday gift from friend and colleague Frans Lanting – the beautifully packaged and presented Collector’s Edition of Bay of Life, Frans & Chris Eckstrom’s epic book chronicling the rejuvenation of California’s Monterey Bay.
An area ravaged by rampant utilization by man during the gold rush which stripped the area of life and resources, Bay of Life documents the resilience of nature and the ways in which like-minded people can come together to help restore an ecosystem to not only a state of recovery, but one in which it thrives.
This message of hope and rejuvenation speaks directly to me. If you’ve caught any of my recent talks regarding my own projects, you’ll know the emphasis I put on describing how wildlife populations in many areas are beginning to recover after an initial decrease due to the influence and reach of man.
Though our climate situation remains dire, nature’s ability to rejuvenate when coupled with human awareness, consideration, and conservation efforts is remarkable. This book project not only documents this significant symbiosis between nature and man – it also helps educate and fund future endeavors to protect this beautiful habitat via the Bay of Life Project.
Both the Collector’s Edition and standard book are available for purchase, with proceeds benefitting this important project.
In a win for wildlife and indigenous communities, the last remaining oil and gas leases on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been cancelled. The US is on track to produce more oil and natural gas than ever before and tapping this vital ecological sanctuary was always a bad idea.
Called “the place where life begins” by the Yup’ik and Gwich’in, the refuge is home to 250 animal species including vast herds of caribou that migrate from wintering Canada every year to calve on the coastal plain, grizzlies, wolves, and millions of migratory birds from as far as Antarctica. As long as I have been photographing, which is a long time indeed, it has been the focus of heated debate over resource extraction. One thing we should know is that this ban is not permanent, and more advocacy must be done to make sure this biologically rich area remains wild and untouched forever—a gift to future generations.
Write your representative:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Environmental organizations:
https://www.protectthearctic.org/
https://alaskawild.org/
https://earthjustice.org/
