|
|
|
|
Click for Detail |
Title |
Story Excerpt |
|
|
Lilies of the Desert |
One of the greatest challenges in photography to me is to define a personal point of view. During my work in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, I looked for ways to capture the essence of this great wetland and my own response to the wonder of it. The Okavango covers thousands of square miles, but it is... (click to read more) |
|
|
Wandering Albatross |
Sometimes, when asked for technical details of my photographs, I try to evade obvious answers. Not because I have anything to hide, but rather that something inside me rebels against isolating bits of mechanical information from their photographic context. My work stems from a fascination with... (click to read more) |
|
|
A Leopard Alone |
Nature photographers are romantics, by and large. Like the painter Albert Bierstadt, they are always looking for opportunities to render the earth at its most dramatic. Yet nature doesn’t often yield double rainbows, and much in the ways of wildlife is decidedly unsentimental.
In recent... (click to read more) |
|
|
Background Matters |
On steep slopes of islands on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, puffins dig deep burrows to raise their fluffy chicks underground. The droppings of thousands of these feisty seabirds fertilize the soil and ensure a lush stand of grass. At the end of each day the birds return from sea and stand... (click to read more) |
|
|
Emperors of Endurance |
Behind the popular notion of penguins as stand-up comedians hides a hardy bird. None prove that point better than the emperor penguin. This largest of all penguins is an animal of endurance that engages in epic treks across the pack ice around Antarctica. After their chicks hatch in the darkness... (click to read more) |
|
|
Surface Tension |
Frogs are in trouble. Many species are disappearing at a rapid rate from wetlands, rain forests, and mountain streams worldwide. It is still unclear what is causing their demise, but research points to human activity as the ultimate source. Because they breathe through their skin, frogs are... (click to read more) |
|
|
Out of this Earth: Borneo’s Rafflesia |
There is nothing else like it in the world. A flower the size of a tractor tire--three feet across, orange and rubbery, with a smell like something that’s been in the fridge too long. This is rafflesia, a mysterious parasitic plant that lives hidden inside a certain vine, and only manifests... (click to read more) |
|
|
Private View |
California’s Big Sur coast is a very public place. Millions of visitors experience it each year by driving Highway One and stopping at overlooks to gaze at the overwhelming scenery. I first laid eyes on Big Sur as a hitchhiking student from the Netherlands in 1972. I discovered the allure of... (click to read more) |
|
|
Apes are Us |
The nature of apes hasn’t changed much in the last thirty years, but our perception of them definitely has. We have evolved from regarding them as King Kongs and clowns to the realization that 98% of our genes are the same. When I conceived of a project entitled “Apes and Humans” for National... (click to read more) |
|
|
Wild Once More |
In this era of mass extinctions it is empowering to focus attention on success stories that buck the tide. I traveled to Mongolia to document the miraculous revival of an animal that had vanished from the wild. The fabled takhi, or Przewalski’s horse, is the only true wild horse in the world; all... (click to read more) |
|
|
Freezing Moments: Antarctica Revisited |
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914-1916 Antarctic expedition is regarded as one of the greatest exploration epics of all time--but the work of the expedition’s photographer, Frank Hurley, deserves a similar place in the annals of heroic photojournalism. Hurley immortalized the journey with... (click to read more) |
|
|
Flashing Eyes |
Sometimes it helps not to know too much. When I started out in photography, I studied how-to books, but invariably became bored or bogged down in the technical lingo. Instead I taught myself. I made numerous mistakes, but among them, there were interesting failures at times--experiments worth... (click to read more) |
|
|
Critical Distance |
Wild animals are wary by nature. They keep their distance from others they don’t know or trust. The minimum space an animal likes to maintain around itself as a safety bubble is known as its critical distance. It varies by species, by individual, and with circumstances, but it is always there. ... (click to read more) |
