August 25, 2026 • 54 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with award-winning nature photographer Joel Sartore about The Photo Ark, nature photography and conservation.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, PHOTO ARK.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb, and we have a special episode here
for you today. It's my interview with iconic award winning
photographer Joel Sartori about the Photo Arc. I'm going to
hold the book up here for folks who can see it.
This is a tremendous amount of fun. This man is
(00:34):
so full of stories. I only had him for an hour,
so only had had so many questions I could ask him.
But I think most of you are familiar with his work.
I mean, I'm talking about probably the most well known
living nature photographer. You have seen his work, whether you
realize it or not, and I think most of you
recognize the name. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
(00:54):
jump right into this. We're gonna mention book titles, We're
gonna mention websites you can go to, things you can
look up, and if you're watching this in video form,
we're gonna try and splash some of these images up
as well, and we're also going to try and include
these on social media. You can certainly just go to
the Photo Arc. You can look up Joe, So Torri.
You can also go to STB Podcast on Instagram and
(01:16):
we'll have some there for the episode as well. But
let's go ahead and jump right into the chat. Hi Joe,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Thanks good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So the Photo Arc Animals of Earth, I'm going to
hold up the book here for folks who are joining
us on video is now out in its twentieth anniversary edition.
Absolutely gorgeous book full of your signature nature photography. I
think most of our listeners and viewers are going to
instantly recognize your work. They're familiar with your work, They're
(01:48):
familiar with these iconic images. So I'd just love to
start here with these images, with this book. Can you
take us back to the spark of inspiration that generated
the idea for the photo arc?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I can't you bet. First, I wanted to introduce the
space I'm in. I'm up at our family cabin in Minnesota.
I've been run off of the living room by my family,
who insisted I record this up in a bedroom so
that they can eat breakfast and talk like normal human beings.
So that's why I'm sitting here next to a bed. Anyway,
(02:20):
the photo Wark animals. Everth is basically a twentieth anniversary
edition of a book that we did long ago, at
least ten years ago, I think now, or if not more.
It just looks at biodiversity. We photographed reptiles and amphibians,
aquatic invertebrates like coral and anemones and sponges. We photograph insects.
(02:44):
We photograph reptiles, birds, mammals, six classes basically, and this
is a celebration of biodiversity we're trying to do through
these simple portraits. We're based trying to get people to
care about something other than with each other and screaming
over every ballgame that comes on to TV. Right like,
(03:05):
let's think about life on Earth. So that's the purpose.
August now, right now is our twentieth anniversary. We've crossed
the eighteen thousand species mark and we're on our way
towards nineteen thousand. Sounds like a lot, but considering there's
more than a million species described so far, got a
long way to go. I'm under no illusion that I
(03:25):
can do it. My son Cole goes on all the
foreign trips with me. He'll take over when I'm done.
We work at Zoos and aquariums, and we work at
wildlife rehab centers, private collections, university study labs, wherever we
can find animals. But we also work in the wild
and so to speak, if people are out doing a
scientific survey, if they're doing a bird banding, if they're
(03:48):
doing a bio blitz or a stream assessment somewhere, we
try to be there in as many cases as possible
to photograph these animals as they're passing through human hands.
They can go through our little aquarium with battery powered light,
they can go to these animals can go into our
little shooting tent and then they get released in just
a few minutes. So the name of the game is
to try to show what biodiversity look like at this
(04:09):
point in time and keep humanity from driving everything or
a lot of it to extinction. Is about the future
of life on Earth. And I don't really know if
that answered your question fully, but that's our mission. Man.
We use black and white backgrounds to eliminate all distractions.
Just look these animals in the eye, so people get
a feeling that there's great beauty and intelligence there and
(04:31):
they're so worthy of preserving. And also without any size
comparison on these plain backgrounds. You know, the tiger beetle
is the same size as a tiger. An ant is
the size of an elephant. And that is very intentional,
because most animals will fit in the palm of your hand.
They are not big. They are not gorillas, they're not rhinos.
They are toads and minnows and sparrows and earthworms and
(04:55):
anything that you can't really get a good look at
you can get a good look at on these black
my backgrounds you can. So we care about the little stuff.
We care about all of it big or small. We
love them all, as we say, But really the goal
is for me to use my life and then my
son to use his life to try to just get
people to care. I mean, the thing that most people
(05:16):
don't understand, rob is that without all these other species,
we are doomed. We want to pretend like we're king
of the forest all the time, and in a way,
we certainly are. We can certainly alter the earth, but
we have to have ants to survive. We have to
have insects survive. We have to have pollinating insects to
bring us fruits and vegetables. We just have to have
(05:37):
a stable ocean, a stable planet. We have to have
rainforests to regulate the rainfall that we get around the
globe and deliver it and timely amounts to the farms
where we know how to grow food to feed ourselves.
It just is folly to think that we can doom
one plant and animal species after another to extinction and
think that we'll be just fine. It won't work that way.
(05:58):
So we're we're in a non political campaigns to public
education campaign to showcase what life looks like now with
the hope that people will wake up in time and
see that there's great not only great value and beauty
and saving these things, but it's a threat to our
very existence to drive these things away. We won't make
(06:19):
it without them.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well said, well said. Now these these images. If anyone
out there cannot picture these already, I recommend you know,
go online look up these photo arc images with these
the stark black and white backgrounds. Really, it's amazing the
character that you're able to capture in the in these
(06:41):
animals and in their their faces, and for the ones
that you definitely have faces. I was wondering. I was
chatting with my wife about these images. She's a photographer
and she's a big fan of yours, and she was
reminded of Richard Aviden's portraits of people against the stark
white background.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Was he an inspiration on your work?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Totally? Yeah, I stand on the shoulder of others. They
are giants out there. Yeah. Avdon his portrait Divimo with
elephants from the late sixties in Paris Is was a
big inspiration to me. His American West series also was
a big inspiration to me that they did in the
latter part of his career. James Baylog came along and
(07:22):
just knocked it out of the park with his personal
vision of vanishing wildlife that ran in as a cover
story in the Geographic in the late eighties, animals on
black and white background, shot as only he can, very
artfully done and really just find art all the way,
but with a real message. And then Susan Middleton and
David Lichwager and their work just outstanding in terms of
(07:45):
especially honing in on features of plants to give plants
personalities and insects and the small things there, really small
things that make the world tick. They understood that and
they were at it long before I and they do
it a lot better than I do. But they're huge,
and you know, there's lots of people that do these
types of portraits, and power to them. I wish there
(08:07):
were a thousand people doing this type of thing or more.
The more people that can see these animals and see
how glorious they are and how important they are, the better.
There's no time to lose, really, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Do you remember what your first portrait was for the project?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, it was a naked mole rat at the Lincoln
Children's Zoo about a mile from my house. I just
my wife was recovering from breast cancer. I'd taken a
year off to stay home with her and be a
dad finally to my three kids, and they were little,
and when they were in school, I just would go
down to that zoo and I just asked to photograph
something that wouldn't run off on me. And we used
(08:54):
a white zoo cutting board in the kitchen and the
zoo kitchen and just they put a naked mole rat
out there and they're kind of half blind and they
kind of stand there and look around and they're odd looking.
So I got pictures of that and a few frogs.
That day. Something like that. But yeah, that's how we
started and that was more than eighteen thousand species ago.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Wow. Now when you're you're shooting these these animals, are
you using like strobe lights or is it constant light?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Yeah? No, I'm using Ellen chrome flash heads, thousand watt
Ellen chrome flash heads. I've got a battery powered pack
so I can shoot bio blitzes in the field or
bird bandings in the field. I just need a portable
table to put my little shooting my cloth shooting tent
on where the animals go in, and then powered lights
as well. We just use white pvcboard from home remodel
(09:42):
places and we glue black velvet to one side. It's
white on the other. Pretty straightforward, and yeah, the shooting
process hasn't changed that much. We just we get our
shooting tents from BNH Photo and buy our black velvet
by the bolt and really try to work with with
rehabers and with biologists around the world, zoos aquariums, private collections.
(10:06):
We just really try to get to know people haven't
trust us. We've never harmed an animal yet, and we
share the pictures. We were grant funded by National Geographic
all the way, so we can share pictures with them,
they can do what they want pretty much with the pictures,
and then we try to also give lyft. We you know,
we have a lot of backing from Geographic and Disney
(10:29):
is part of Geographic, and so just the Disney, the
main Disney is to Graham feed is three hundred and
fifty million people, and I think their total social reaches
about five hundred million. So if somebody is doing good
in the world, we can celebrate that. You know, we
go to good zoos where there's an abundant attention and care.
We celebrate those. I mean, nobody likes a bad zoo,
and I will go anywhere I have to to shoot
(10:51):
if it's a matter of getting the species into the
photo work or never seeing it again. But we celebrate
good zoos and we can really give lyft to their
efforts that way. Our eighteen thousand species, for example, was
a red hand fish from Tasmania and the lady that
ran that breeding program there's more in this one room
where they breed them at two hundred and fifty specimens
(11:14):
than there is in the wild. I think they're in
the low double digits now in the wild. And she
was they just live in one Bay and off the
coast of Tasmania, and she wrote to me after that
was announced and she said, this came along at a
great time. We've heard from people all over the world.
Our grant fundings do to run out, and we've got
a lot of interest now and people wanting to help us.
Fish are small, just about like that, but they've evolved,
(11:36):
these front fins. They've turned them into kind of hands
that they used to walk on the ocean floor, and
they're very cute and charismatic expression. They seem to have
an expression on their face. And it's very satisfying when
I hear that. When we started the project twenty years ago,
social media just wasn't a thing, so all we could
do was offer pictures to people. And now we can
(11:58):
offer a lot more than that. We can introduce their efforts,
their stewardship, their animals, their efforts to save habitat to
a global audience, which is very satisfying, very satisfying.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Now some of these animals are huge. Which animals have
been the most logistically challenging the photograph.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Chimps are tough. Chimps are really tough. I mean, I'm
not working with trained chimps for the movie industry. You know,
we go to zoos that may have this one subspecies
of chimp that we don't have from North Africa, you know,
and they're really smart, fast, agile, all the things. I'm not.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I think I saw some footage on one of the documentaries,
or maybe it was a Ted X talk that you
gave or Ted talk. Yeah, but the chimp just immediately
tore down the background.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, that was early on when I thought I'd use
white paper. That doesn't work with apes. Chimps are tough.
Big animals require a bit of prep by the zoo.
Like the Omaha Zoo painted an off exhibit space black
and white for their elephant and baby. They knew they
could park mom on a dime by giving her her
(13:05):
favorite treats. Then the baby just kind of moved through
its legs the whole time and as cute as can be.
And Indianapolis Suit did the same thing with they had
it on black though they had a new baby elephant.
So we did that on black. But the zoo had
to basically create a black space, either with paint on
the walls and floor or with sheets, supply wood or
(13:25):
other materials that turn the walls black. It was just
at the Minnesota Zoo in Minneapolis on the way up
here to the cabin, and scouted out their bull moose corral.
They have a bull moose that we've been watching for
a number of years. He's now big enough to be photographed,
but the windows. So we talked about how we were
going to black out this stall that he goes to,
(13:45):
how we're going to light him and we can lure
him in place with brows with his favorite greenery to eat.
But you know, there's a little bitty window between the
time when the velvet sheds off of his antlers and
makes him look very moose like and when rut stars arts,
which is in October. There's like a four week three
week window. Once rut starts, you don't want to be
(14:06):
around a bull moose. And so there's a little window
in September. So we'll come back and get that. And yeah,
it's always something, but for big animals, the zoo has
to prep some For small animals size of a duck
or smaller, we can just use my little shooting tents
that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
There is there another animal on the list that you
really want to photograph, but it just hasn't come together yet.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, we don't really have We have a list of
the things we've shot, but there isn't really a list
of the things we haven't shot, unless it's a state
specific thing, like I have a list of all the
freshwater fish I still need from Nebraska and from Minnesota.
I have a list of the birds I need from America.
But other than that, it's pretty much wide open. Whatever
they get, and that we usually get an We approach
(14:50):
a zoo or an aquarium or rehab places and say
what do you have in care, and then we run
their inventory against our list and we quickly come up
with well, these are the ones we need. And they'll
say they'll say how many. I'll say, well, these fifteen,
and they'll say, well, we can do these ten. I'm like,
that's fine. Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. I'm going to
go there on Wednesday since I'm up here in Minnesota.
(15:11):
It's about ninety minute drive. And they had a list
of about forty species we need, mostly in vertebrates like
coral sponges, that kind of things, things that live in
the Great Lakes. And they had twelve fish we needed
and they say we think we can catch nine of
those fish. They're small, and we'll put them in my
little tank, my little Plexi tank, photograph them and put
(15:31):
them back and they think so we think we can
do about out of maybe say forty, We think we
can end up getting twenty five or so for the day,
and that's fine. You know, we'll visit again someday. Yeah,
it's kind of a process, but it's something I do
every day of the year. I'm always running inventories or
thinking about where to go next. But yeah, in terms
(15:53):
of a list, there's over a million species described, so
we don't want to burden anybody like that. We just
have our list of eighteen thousand and Caesier for us
to just go through it once we get their inventories.
Compare it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Now, you've I'm based here in Atlanta, Georgia. You've shot
down down here in Atlanta I have.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
There's a fabulous place down there. Well, the Atlanta Zoo
is great too. I worked at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens
for a number of years with a guy named Mark Mandica,
who was in charge of the frog pod. These frogs
they brought back from Panama when the Kittrid fungus was
spreading and he had the very last rabs fringed limb
tree frog and I photo got that animal a couple times.
(16:31):
A wonderful animal. They named Tuffy because he outlived all
life expectancy and he's gone now, so That'specius extinct sadly.
But we got him up on the side of the
Vatican with the Pope watching. We got him up on
the Empire State Building and on the un Building, so
that's cool. With his call, Mark recorded his call the
one time it was ever recorded. Mark has gone on
(16:53):
to found the Amphibian Foundation in the Atlanta area. Actually
they're based out of Decatur, and that is the only
center that's devoted to just to amphibians. It's a big
education center and that's really awesome. So he does great
work with breeding frosted flatwood salamanners and gopher frogs, things
(17:13):
that are very highly endangered and they that's a great
place that I've been several times, and they deserve our
support too. If anybody's curious. Amphibianfoundation dot org. It's a
great place to support. Love them.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And yeah, Mark is a friend of the show. We've
had him on before and I.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Really can't think any say anything more highly about the guy.
He's just he really really cares. He and his wife,
Crystal run it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Great, great place, and they do day camps for kids
in the summer and try to get kids connected to nature.
This is the other thing too, I was wanting to mention.
You know, guys like me old enough. We grew up
in the woods and you know, having a marsh to
play in and learn about tadpoles, you know, along a
stream whatever. Most kids today are urban and they don't
(17:59):
have that. And so going to a place like the
Amphibian Foundation is a big deal. Hands on with a turtle,
hands on with a non venomous snake, or to see
how these frogs are bred, what the work they do,
Why it's so important to save reptiles and amphibians. That's
a big, big deal. We have to get future generations
to care more about animals than we did, not less,
(18:22):
because we didn't save them very well. This is a
big deal to Mark and his crew there.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Now you used to do all sorts of field work
outside of the arc, Yes, for GEO and for other
publications as well, right.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah, Yeah, Audubon and net Geo and Nature Conservancy. Yeah,
it was a globe trot and field photographer for about
seventeen years. For the geographic alone, it was more than
thirty stories all in the wild, not touching anything, all
in the wild. And then when my wife got sick,
that that changed. I just figured that life short and
(19:08):
if I wanted to really highlight small species, I better
get on it. So I started doing these hybrid stories
where it was partially in the field and also to
show what these animals are up against or by all
just working with these animals to his story on wolves
and grizzly bears and the National Wildlife Refuge System and
the Endangered Species Act. And then once I started to
(19:28):
shift to photo arc, I did these hybrids where it
was it was some studio portraiture and some stuff in
the wild, and now it's just studio portraits. That's it.
Nothing else, that's it.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Do you do you do you miss the adventure of
like the pure field?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
No, no, no way, no way. I did not. I
did time. You know, like people are like, don't you
want to go out on safari? Don't you want to
take a hike. It's beautiful at the top of the mountain, nope.
I actually wrote a memoir. We just finished it. It'll
be out this spring, also by National graffic book. It's
called Dream Job Confessions of a National Geographic Photographer. It
(20:05):
is not a dream job too often, but it is
a lot of work. It's not vacation, and it is
people will enjoy the stories in it, I think, but
it's it's just not what people think. In a way,
it is a dream job, obviously because you get to
do something that hopefully makes the world a better place.
But it is the best part of our day, to
(20:26):
be honor honest, is dinner, because it's meant we got
through the day and everything's cool and we started again.
But most of the time we don't see our We
never see our hotel in the light. It's always in
the dark. We leave in the dark, we come back
in the dark. We work it straight through. We don't
take any days off. We're usually gone three weeks. My
son is a tank. He is bulletproof. He's going to
(20:46):
take over for me, my son Cole. He goes with
me on all the foreign trips. He'll take over for me.
I'm too old to do it anymore. Feel good now,
But he's there and he goes with me, and he'll
you know, but he doesn't complain. I might complain a
little bit. But if it's a choice between getting back
to the hotel early enough or skip and lunch, you know,
(21:07):
like we leave species on the table, that is a
miserable feeling. We've gone a long way, and we want
to tell their stories, no matter whether they're a little
stream fish or a graatfish or even a snail. We
want to tell their stories. That's why we've gone all
that way, and that's what we do. But in terms
of being in the field and missing those days, there's
a lot of pressure. Like I remember being given an
(21:30):
assignment to do the Gulf Coast of America, and this
was back in the early days. So they said, okay, great,
you got twenty seven weeks of assignment time, have it
done in one calendar year from now. Good luck, that's it.
And then they get it's like one of those courses
in college where your entire grade is based on a
(21:51):
final exam, no other grading material. So you give a
show to your editors at the magazine and you either
live or die. Either lives or dies, and so it's
the same with a story on grizzly bears. You got
eight weeks. Haven't done in one calendar year eight weeks?
Good luck? How would you go about making enough pictures
(22:12):
of grizzly bears that are interesting to warnt a story
in National Geographic Magazine? How would you? What would you even?
Where would you even start? Like? What would you do
grizzly bears in North America? Good luck? It's not what
people think, you like, rob, what would you what would
you do? What would you do to do grizzly bears
in North America?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean I'd be a little terrified even go looking
for them.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I think I was terrified. And by the way, you know,
just long lens pictures of bears in a field, that's
not going to cut it anymore that it will not
do it, or wolves or koala's. You know, I did
stories on all these things on on the you know,
National Wildlife Refuge System. Like you have to do pictures
(22:56):
that combine photojournalism and art. The pictures hold for a
few months. You have to do pictures that are new
and surprising and different. It's really super difficult. Like, it's
not what people think. Long ones pictures don't cut it.
If we have time, I'll just tell you a quick story.
A picture I'm proud of. I'm not very proud of
(23:18):
most of my pictures, you know, they all need work.
But there was one where I problem solved. It involved
not having anything in my ears playing. It involves having
my radio off of my car. And it evolved about
I don't know, an eight hour drive across Wyoming I
was thinking about. I was assigned to do cold bed
methane extraction in the Inner Mountain West and I had
(23:39):
eight weeks. That was an average amount of signent, so
drilling for natural gas in the American West, eight weeks go,
what do you do? What do you do? And I
got that job because I needed the work. I took
that job because I needed the paycheck at a family
And so I know, and I can see how you're
looking at me, like, I hope he doesn't ask me
(24:00):
what I do. Yeah, I didn't know, and so I
got into it. I flew out there and you know,
just looked at drilling and hung out with some well drillers,
and hung out with some environmental folks and photograph stage
grouse that are out there in drilling country. Anyway, I
(24:20):
thought about the fact that the gas is held in
the ground by groundwater. It's held in the gas is
kept trapped in ancient coal seams by groundwater. So to
free up the gas, the mining companies often will pump
that groundwater out and into a river. Sometimes it's clean,
sometimes it's filthy. It's filthy it kills all the fish.
(24:41):
So I thought, how do we illustrate the fish that
are at risk in Wyoming from drilling? And not all
drillers are, you know, like and I burned natural gas
in my home, so this is not anti natural gas.
I just wanted to show what these fish look like.
And they lived in the main river that goes through
drilling company in Wyoming was called the powder River because
(25:03):
it had from pioneer times, it had a lot of
dissolved soils in it. It looked like chocolate milk. You
can't see that far. How do you illustrate the fish
in the Powder River? So I shut off my radio.
I didn't have any podcasts going. I just drove. I
had to drive to Utah from Wyoming for something else,
and it was like an eight hour drive. And by
(25:24):
the time I got to the other end of that drive,
I had it figured out. I thought, Okay, first of all,
the fish need to be in clear water. How do
we get them in clear water so we can show them?
I bet the state of Wyoming has a natural history department.
Most states too. So I called the guy that was
in charge of non game fish, the fish that live
(25:45):
in the Powder River, these little minnows and days and shiners,
And I said, do you guys ever survey the Powder
River to see what's in there? He says, yeah, we're
doing a rapid biological assessment all next summer to see
what's in the Powder River to see because we've never
even done that, to collect fish for our museum. And
I'm like, great, And so I thought. I told him
(26:07):
what I planned to do, and he said, yeah, that
sounds great, that sounds great. Can we use the pictures?
I said sure? So I met with his crew. It
was like six months later. I met with his crew
on the Powder River and they were running a sane,
these two ladies running a sane or a long wide
net and getting fish out of the Powder River that
they were going to put in their museum. They were
going to put them in jars of alcohol. And I
had had custom made kind of a couple of thermopane
(26:32):
windows that were about They were pretty big, like thirty
inches wide twenty four inches tall, but only about that
thick little, you know, half inch thick, big enough for
minnows to go in, but they couldn't turn around on me.
And I put air bowlers in there so they'd be comfortable,
and they kind of schooled and they swam in a circle,
and so I could see them clearly, here's the minnows
(26:52):
of the Powder River. And I put them on a
couple saw horses that i'd modified with brackets or holders.
So I sat that window full of fish on the
saw horses on a bluff overlooking the Powder River. And
there were white, puffy clouds in a blue sky, and
so it looked like these fish were flying through the
sky and through the landscape and swimming across the vast, beautiful,
(27:14):
untouched landscape of Wyoming with the powdered river winding through it.
And it looked good. And then in the caption we
explain what we're doing. But it's not a photoshop thing.
There was no photoshop back then. It's just this picture
that took a while to solve. But that is typical
for a national geographic photograph. In the field, you have
(27:34):
to problem solve. You have to figure out a way
to make new and interesting and surprising pictures that tell
a story that engage people in a very noisy world.
How do you engage people to stop and read a magazine.
That's our job. Well, the same applies today for the photowark.
We have this task of getting somebody to care about
a snail, to care about a minnow, to care about
(27:56):
a sparrow, or a toad or something that lives in
murky water or even in the in soil. That is
our job. And so what I figured starting out, eye
contact is really important. If an animal has eyes, let's
look them in the eye, and let's have them fill
the frame so they're all the same size. You know,
that worm that came out of the mud, he will
do with something that's an artful shape, and we'll compare
(28:19):
him in a book someday with a snake and the
same shape or the same color. So we think that
the more pictures, the more species the ARC has in it,
the more possibilities there are to highlight some of the
species that are very overlooked yet so important, like freshwater mussels.
They're living aquatic canaries in a coal mine. They are
(28:40):
telling us their water is so filthy they can't live
in it anymore. We all drink water. We should care.
The more we get into the photo arc, the bigger
it can become in terms of being able to tell
the stories about life on Earth.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, just the one book here, the photo Arc, Animals
of Earth. I love how you open it up and
you'll have on opposing pages like two, you know, very
different animals. You know, you'll have a mammal on one
side and maybe you know, you know, a fish or
or an insect on the other end. But there'll be
something about the two that lines up, be it like
(29:15):
the form or the shape or something about the shots.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And there were two designers worked on the book. Melissa
Ferris did the original and then Lisa Gibson at the
Geographic did the other one. And we added a new
signature or a new section of the book, like sixty
four more pages something like that. And what's interesting is
there's a there. There's one picture that Elisa and I
both really liked when we were designing the new book,
(29:38):
the new version of this book. And it's not something
you think. It's a ball of red blood worms that
were being used to feed fish at some nature center
I went to. They were just in this ball and
so I shot it at a diagonal with with worms
coming off the back end. They're tiny little things, but
they formed this ball and so the way and I
(30:00):
shot at a diagonal, so it looked like a comet
streaking across the time. We were both really into that,
you know, like, and it's two pages in the book.
So it's great that they have in their books division.
They have very creative team that is into the odd
and loves to showcase the underdogs. We're really about the underdogs.
We'll shoot, we photograph tigers, we photographed bears and lions,
(30:22):
but we're really into the underdogs, the things that people
will never see without us. And that is the case.
I'm afraid for at least eighty percent of the things
in this in these books that we do and in
these exhibits and in my talks, easy eighty percent, probably
more than that. Ninety percent of these animals people will
have never heard of without the photog arc telling their stories.
(30:43):
And so it's a great honor and a great responsibility,
and it's how I'll spend the rest of my life,
you know, as in my son will too. But we
think it's worth it, and it's it's like, there's this
great ts Eliot quote that I think about all the
time all the time. What good is it? What good
is it? Right? He said, for us, there is only
(31:03):
the trying. The rest is not our business. And so
I think that's true. My little interpretation of that is
I'm trying till the day I die. I'm trying. My
son will too. So if that is, if people pay
attention to it or not, will be long gone. We
(31:23):
don't know. We hope they do, because it's really folly
to think we can do them one species to extinction
after another, not just animals, with plants too. I think
that will be just fine. It won't work that way.
Food doesn't just come from the grocery store. It comes
from a stable planet, and same for water. So we
just are hopeful that this does some good and that
(31:46):
is a great way to live. You know, you know
name of that memoir dream job. It's a little bit sarcastic,
but really, to me, it is a dream job if
you love what you do and you think that you're
making the world better, and we do so it's good.
It's good. No regrets.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, I love how like your images and the images
in this book in particular, it's like, I mean, they're
just so arresting. They capture your attention. They maybe make
you give an animal a second or third glance that
you again, you know, maybe you're just completely dismissive of
or otherwise.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
We hope, We hope, man. That is our big driving thing.
People do not understand the train wreck that is coming.
They're starting to see it now. Violent storms, hotter every year,
is hotter than the last, more fighting, sea levels come up.
Eighty percent of the human population around the world lives
within one hundred miles of the coast or so, massive
(32:42):
human migration, displacement of people, people not able to make
a living, getting desperate, like these environmental problems are going
to result in real human suffering and real problems for
us and drive our economies into the ground. Some of
us and we don't really get into that, but we do.
We do. Just really want people to appreciate the fact
that without bees and butterflies and ants, we can't have
(33:04):
pollinating insects. We're not gonna have food, so you know,
at least fruits and vegetables. So we, in our little
quiet way, are trying to get people to fall in
love with nature as we have. That's it. That's it,
and there's not much more to it than that. We
are a long term education campaign financed by National Geographic
(33:26):
We have the best shot of anybody because of their
because they're funding it, because of the microphone, the megaphone
that we have through NG and Disney to try to
get people to wake up and care about saving habitat.
That's where it's all at for us, tundra, prairies, oceans.
(33:47):
Try to get them to care. It's a big deal.
But you know, in the end, if we're just monkeys
looking at ourselves in the mirror all day long, halla
stories over, we hope not and we go about our
business and we don't get down about it. We are
positive every day and every way we can be. We
(34:08):
do all we can right now with what we got,
and we got a lot. We got a lot, and
most of the world's biodiversity is still here, it's still intact.
But we have to take the pressure off of it.
We must take the pressure off of it in various ways.
And so that's just kind of what we do. We
don't browbeat people. We hope that they We hope that
(34:29):
they love birds, We hope they love butterflies, we hope
they love seeing deer, whatever it is that people like.
We hope they like to fish, whatever. We just want
to connect with people in ways that we think that
it's healthy, good for us, lowers our blood pressure, and
isn't it nice knowing that these animals are out there still,
that they're forced to hike in and the world's a
(34:50):
good place, you know, just like we think positive about
things and that it can be going into the future.
We just think the world's a good place now. Not everywhere,
of course, but we believe in people wanting to help.
And since I'm on my high horse here, I tell
you I think that there's great capacity in human beings
to want to help. We really do. As part of
(35:11):
our species, you know, we want to fight, we're warlike,
we're tribal as hell, but we really if you see
what happens when there's a catastrophe somewhere, you know, a
terrible cyclone hits Bangladesh, Supplies come in from all over
the world. Help comes in from all over the world.
Like we really do want to help, but we don't
(35:32):
know what to do. What do we do? How can
we do any Well, there's tons of stuff we can do.
Just for example, if you have a lawn, think about
planting native plants to help pollinating insects. Quit porn poison
all over the ground, porn insecticide on the ground, killing bugs.
If you love birds, birds feed their young insects. They
(35:54):
don't feed their young seeds, they feed their babies insects,
And so if you're wanting insecticide on your lawn to
keep it looking a certain way, you're killing off the
bird's abilities to bring off young. Quit pouring herbicide on
your lawn. You need some diversity in your lawn. You
need flowering plants, you know, to allow insects to thrive
(36:14):
as well. There's just lots of things people can do,
and that people don't think about the fact that they
can do a ton in their hometown. You know, if
they have a little campaign they can get going to
get their state highway department or county roads department or
city parks to plant more native plants and then not
mow when the ground nesting birds are trying to pull
off young in the spring. Just don't mow all the time,
(36:36):
then they have to looks like a golf course all
the time. That's a big deal. That helps insects, that
helps birds. Like a lot of common sense things people
can do if they think about it, but most people
don't know what they can do. Well, there's tons if
people want to go to my website, which is Joelsartory
dot com, there's a frequently asked questions page and right
(36:56):
there are lots of good things people can do from
their own hometowns to make the world. And they can
also get a sign book through our store. That's the
some place you can get sign books as through our store.
But you know, come to it just to learn about
what you can do in your own town make the
world better.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So a lot of the like the reasons for hope
that you're you're outlining here, they seem they seem to
be based in sort of like rekindling, like a natural
inborn association with nature and animals that we're all going
to have, right, which it reminds me a lot of
of what EO. Wilson had to So I know you
were you're a bigger admirer of.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
As well, very much. So yeah, yeah, yeah, he and
I got to He was in at Gorenghosa National Park
in Mozambique, and my son Cole and I were there
with him for a couple of weeks. We just basically
sat at his feet every day when he wasn't writing
and soaked it up, you know, when he was writing.
I mean that's like to go up and talk. We
(37:52):
never made small talk, went up and just chit chatted
with him, unless it was at a meal at dinner,
because it'd be like interrupting Lincoln when he was writing
the Gettysburg address. You know, very smart guy and he
taught He taught us both we can't live without ants.
Ants are such a big deal in terms they clean
up the environment, They aerate the soil, They provide food
(38:12):
for all sorts of other life forms. If ants went away,
so would humans, without a doubt. He said. He also
was the one that taught me about the value of
converting the ornamental lawn or just people having green grass
back to native native plants, nectar bearing plants from monarch, butterflies, milkweed.
He taught us about that. It's a really good teacher
(38:33):
and a very kind person who insisted that we call
him ed, not doctor Wilson, just a great guy. Yeah,
an honor to hang out with that guy. I walked
past his room. It was after dark, he'd already eaten.
His curtains were open in his room at this lodge
we stayed at in Goring Gosa, and I could see
(38:53):
him he sniffing grasshoppers that he'd collected earlier that day
on part of a bio blitz. And I went back
to I was my way to the dining hall and
I went and sat down with some people who had
become friends, and I told him what I saw, and
I said I should go over there and take his picture.
And they're like, you know what, it's after dark. Leave
him alone, man, leave him alone. I said, I bet
you I can get over there and make a picture
(39:14):
that gets into the magazine based on what I just saw.
Because he had a big pile of bags of grasshoppers.
I bet you get in and out of there, and
the time it takes to play a song on the radio.
Bet you I could because I had my gear with me.
I was just getting in from the field. They said, okay,
we'll time you. So I went in there, knocked on
the door. He said, yeah, Joel, come on in. I said,
what are you doing? Why are you smelling grasshoppers? He said, well,
(39:35):
there's a genus of grasshoppers called foam grasshoppers that when
they're irritated, they emit this really acidic smelling foam, and
so I'm picking them up that irritates them, smelling them,
and then I'm sorting them into that genus. A lot
of these are new to me. I was like, do
you care if I get a picture? He says no, no,
I said, just go on, go on with what you're doing.
So click, click click got him sniffing a couple of
(39:56):
grasshoppers in the light of a sconce in his room.
Next week, desk I was back at that table on
they time it was like three minutes twenty seven seconds.
I'm like, great, there you go, and it made the magazine.
But he was just a very gracious, great man, you know,
won the Pulitzer Prize a time or two, and just
a fantastic human being.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
They send me a couple of a couple of your
books here to look at for this interview. This is
one of them. It's a it's a board book National
Geographic Photo Arc Bodies QUERPOS I'm going to pass this
one on to my nephew when I'm done with it,
because he's a toddler. So kids obviously have such that
a natural connection with animals. Do you see like these
(40:47):
these kids books being like a like a vital part
of the photo arc.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh. Absolutely. One of the reasons that I'm excited about
him is kid's books that my parents gave me led
to a lifelong fascination with animals, and I believe it
or not of any extinction. When I was about eight
years old, they gave me a time Life book on
the birds, and in the back was a section on
extinct US birds. There was a big, full page picture
of Martha, the very last passenger pigeon, with a little
(41:13):
sign next to it as she was on display in
the Smithsonian. You know, last of her kind died in
nineteen fourteen Cincinnati Zoo. And you know, back then I thought, well,
people just didn't know what they were doing. But now
they knew full well. We had the telegraph to tell
each other where the last great flocks were, and they
got market hunted down to nothing on purpose because they
were worth a little bit of money, not much, a
couple pennies apiece. So, you know, kids, introducing children to
(41:38):
nature right off the bat when they're toddlers is a
great idea. And we have a little granddaughter back at
home who's like nineteen months twenty months. She loves those books.
They're waterproof, you know, spill anything on them or drool
on them or whatever. She goes through them again and
again first thing she runs to in the house. Or
these are these kids board books that geographics done. So
this one's on body shapes and it's also since Spanish.
(42:02):
All these books are in English and Spanish, and so
we really feel like if we can get them into
the tent of conservation young there's nothing wrong with that.
It's okay to care about nature. It's good, it's good,
it's refreshing. You know. We feel we've got them for
life if they if they care, you know, and they
won't care if they've never even met these things. So
(42:24):
it's very important to allow them to meet these animals
at a very young age and come back to them
again and again. I've looked at that the time Life
book on the birds that had that extinct that extinction section.
I've looked at that book a thousand times in my life,
but that the other day, and it's just really it's
an important reminder of what we stand to lose and
(42:45):
what we should celebrate, why we should care, you know,
it's the big thing. I get a question, you know,
I get a question all the time, you know, what
good is it? I hear that all the time, you know,
not all the time, but sometimes what good is it?
Tough crowd ask me that? But I say, I don't know?
What good am I? I don't say what good? Are
you asking a question like that? But I say I
(43:07):
don't know? I mean, what good am I? I don't know.
I think that all of them have an important role
to place, to play over time in our survival. And
you know, like if fish can't live in the streams,
why would we think the water is any good to drink?
And we have to have water, right, we have to
have bees and butterflies to bring us fruits and vegetables.
All the stories, you know, but the reality of it
(43:31):
to me, wouldn't the world be a greatly impoverished place
if we allow these creatures to vanish? Wouldn't it be
a poorer world? I mean, we stand guard over works
of art twenty four hours a day, And when some
painting gets stolen out of an art museum in Amsterdam,
we hear about it for months. Where is it, Who's
got it? Are they going to catch them? And yet
(43:52):
we'd let these amazing works of art, like some beautiful
bird go to extinction. That's just not acceptable and I
don't understand it and I don't accept it. So these kids' books,
back to your original question, these kids books are super
important in terms of getting people on board and getting
them to care for the rest of their lives. That's
(44:13):
what kids books do. It's not just for the kid
of today, but it really really gets a strong sense
that I love these things and I want these things
into our hearts, you know. And it's a great thing
because these kids will be landowners, or they will own
corporations that have the choice of whether or not to
bulldoze that last place or whether simpler, easier choice, and
(44:35):
a very reasonable one, is should we plant the yard
or the lawns at our corporate headquarters to native prairie? Yes,
Yes you should, Yes you should. It's an easy thing
to do, and people out on their breaks from work
are going to love it. They're going to walk around,
they're going to tell their buddies that they saw them
on our butterfly out there today. And you know, it's
(44:57):
a really good thing and so much more interesting just
green grass. It really has golf courses, could do a
world of good city parks. There's lots we can do. Now.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I want to be respectful if you're your time here,
But there's so many, so many questions I could ask
you based on past talks that I've seen, So I'm
just gonna ask a couple of quick ones here. First
of all, tell us about spitting cobras, your encounters with them.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Will you see the sixty minutes piece is that the
thing spitting cobras. They're interesting and then they developed venom.
They can deliver it through their fangs, but they can
also spit it, and it's good for a couple of things.
One is if you spit venom in the predator's eyes
that they're trying to get you and blind them, they
(45:45):
can't really find you to eat you. That's handy. And
they also can venomate prey that way, Like if they say,
see a desert kangaroo rat, they spit their venom in
their face and then that rat can't see anything and
get it pretty easily. So but that's not something that
I want to happen to me. But I have to
photograph them, so I wear goggles or a face shield
(46:08):
with glasses, and then I just I'm good. You know,
I don't want to be invenomated, but I work at
a respectful distance. I ask the keepers, what can I do?
Where can I be? Don't let me get too close.
I kind of lose the sense of where I am
with this camera box in front of my face. And
uh yeah, so far, no problem. But that spitting cobra
(46:28):
venom is really hard to get off a lenses, So
I use a filter, a glass screw and filter whenever
i'm working with those to keep the If I do
get it invenomated and I can't wipe it off right away,
you really want to watch it. You don't want any cuts.
You don't want to get it in your mouth. You
get a little cut in your mouth, you don't want
to get that stuff in your bloodstream at all. So
you just have to be kind of careful. And yeah, yeah,
(46:51):
I'll be glad when I'm done with the cobras and
the mambas. We're getting there.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
You've had stowaways before, right in your photo gear.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
I have, you've on your homework. Yeah. I remember going
to the International Rattlesnake Museum in downtown Albuquerque and we
and we had a snake, a rattlesnake get into the
bottom of my camera bag and we had to somehow
get the lenses and cameras out to get to the snake.
You know. I also had mamas are really good at climbing.
(47:20):
A lot of vipers are good at climbing, but mamas
are really fast and smart. And had something like that,
I think it was a cobra get inside my climbed,
wrapped its body around my light stand and went right
up and into this big soft box I had with
this kind of waffle grid on the front of it
to modify the light going straight. It was really hard
to extract that snake out of there, and I was
(47:42):
also worried that he was going to bust the flashead
inside because there's exposed glass there. Oh we got him out, okay,
But yeah, those aren't Those aren't fun. We're not looking
for drama. Were just looking to get the pictures quickly
and get out, and we're just not looking for anything
out of the out of the ordinary. We just want
(48:04):
it to be drama free, get done, go ab dinner,
and start again the next day.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
I have to ask you about another photograph. This is
one that I believe it's on your website. And my
wife showed this one to May years ago, and you know,
really wanted to tell me the story behind it. So
I have to ask about the mosquito feet photograph.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
I figured you were going to ask about that one.
So I had a boss who was You know, when
you work with an editor at the geographic they're kind
of right with you. They don't go in the field
with you much, but there every day we talk what
do you get? What do you get? What you get?
And it was a story on Alaska's North Slope, and
I had a discussion with her. I hadn't made a
good picture in about three days. You can't have too
(48:42):
many days without making good pictures and still work for them.
The lines a mile long. People wanted to work for them.
So I hadn't made a picture in about three days.
But I remembered this place I was at. It was
the most mosquito filled spot I'd been to on Alaska's
North Slope, and I've been all over the slope. It
was a place called Tulik Research Station. It had It
was up on a series of bluffs or rolling sand
(49:03):
sandy kind of hills, and I just remember the bugs
were so thick. We couldn't even talk. We couldn't open
our mouths. We had to wear head netting and then
we could kind of talk, but it was like just buzzing.
Sounded like you were by a highway. There were so
many mosquitoes buzz just clouds of them, and so even
when it was windy and cold, they were right there.
(49:25):
And so I thought, you know, if I ever get
in a jam or I'm not making good pictures of
anything going on up here, I'm going to drive to
Tulk to that hill that was so bad, and I'm
going to sit there and I'm going to take off
my shoes and socks and just let them eat up
my feet. Because I'd had my feet in the magazine
two times before, and I thought, third times a charm,
Let me get my let me get my feet in
(49:46):
the magazine again. So I took off my shoes and socks.
I duct taped my jeans inside my jeans so they
couldn't get up my pant legs and I just put
my two big, white, ugly paddle feet out there with
this beautiful mountain engine soft light and just photographed my
feet for about thirty minutes. And it was horrible. It
was horrible, awful, you know, like they were crackling. There's
(50:11):
so many laid on top of your crackling. But tell
your wife. On my left foot was a bare spot
of white flesh, but it didn't have a blood flow,
and the mosquito, since that didn't have any blood flow,
so none. I was waiting for mosquito to land in
that spot to kind of complete the composition. But after
about thirty minutes, I was like being driven insane. It
(50:32):
was just horrible, and I I got up. I bracketed
it was slide film, so I bracketed my exposures enough
to know I had it. And then I got in
the truck and drove back. And it was a three
and a half hour drive back to dead Horse, where
I'd rented a mining company pickup truck. I took off
my shoes and socks, I scratched my feet and I've
(50:54):
never felt anything that good in my life. I spept
the entire way back and felt so good. I forgot
to wallow. I was ruling on myself, scratching my feet,
alternating which foot i'd scratch. I just want to keep
one foot on the guess at all times. So tell
your wife. It just turned me into an animal, and
it was. But it's one of the most popular pictures
(51:15):
I ever shot, by.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Far, and I think you can buy a print on
your website.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
I'm sure you can buy a print of anything I shot.
I on the rights to all of it. But the
thing is with that, it's like that illustrates to me
how far you've got to go in terms of discomfort
to make a picture that's surprising. We want people to
be surprised and entertained and you know, move them somehow.
That's what a good journalist does, is get people involved
(51:42):
and take the reader with you into that place, show
them what it's like. And because mosquitoes are such an
important part of the ecosystem up there most of the continents,
ducks and geese and shore birds go up there. Swans too,
they go up there to breed, and there's such a
a rich food chain there. It starts with mosquitos, and
(52:04):
I wanted to illustrate the mosquitoes there, but I couldn't
really figure out a way to do it in a
way that would attract people or they'd notice because they're
so small. They're usually small, and they're up against the sky,
and how do you show that? But yeah, I figured
that would work excellent.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well, Joel, I really appreciate you coming on the show
and chatting with me again. It's honored to talk with you.
A huge fan of your work. The book again, I'm
going to hold it up here for folks. This is
the photo Arc Animals of Earth. Tremendous book. Recommend everybody
pick up a copy and if you see the copy
out in the world, pick it up and start looking through.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It and go to joelsartry dot com if you want
to signed copy. Excellent profits we get go right back
into the photo arcs. So you're helping build the arc too.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
Thank you very much, such a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Thank you all right, Thanks again to Joey for taking
time out of his day to chat with me. Thanks
to my wife Bonnie for helping me out with the
questions on this one. Like I say, she's a photographer.
She's been a big fan of Joel's work for years
and years. I think I first learned about Joel's work
(53:15):
through my wife, so she was excited that I was
going to get to chat with him, and we were
working together on these questions. So definitely I have to
get her props here, and I know that she's listening
as well. So thanks, sweetie, I appreciate it, and of
course thanks to JJ Posway, the excellent JJ Posway who
edits our show and stitched all of this together. Let's see.
(53:37):
On top of that, I'll just remind everyone out there
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast. We have our core episodes. That's our
core science and culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We
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and check that out. You'll find this wherever you get
(53:59):
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(54:19):
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb, and we have a special episode here
for you today. It's my interview with iconic award winning
photographer Joel Sartori about the Photo Arc. I'm going to
hold the book up here for folks who can see it.
This is a tremendous amount of fun. This man is
(00:34):
so full of stories. I only had him for an hour,
so only had had so many questions I could ask him.
But I think most of you are familiar with his work.
I mean, I'm talking about probably the most well known
living nature photographer. You have seen his work, whether you
realize it or not, and I think most of you
recognize the name. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
(00:54):
jump right into this. We're gonna mention book titles, We're
gonna mention websites you can go to, things you can
look up, and if you're watching this in video form,
we're gonna try and splash some of these images up
as well, and we're also going to try and include
these on social media. You can certainly just go to
the Photo Arc. You can look up Joe, So Torri.
You can also go to STB Podcast on Instagram and
(01:16):
we'll have some there for the episode as well. But
let's go ahead and jump right into the chat. Hi Joe,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Thanks good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So the Photo Arc Animals of Earth, I'm going to
hold up the book here for folks who are joining
us on video is now out in its twentieth anniversary edition.
Absolutely gorgeous book full of your signature nature photography. I
think most of our listeners and viewers are going to
instantly recognize your work. They're familiar with your work, They're
(01:48):
familiar with these iconic images. So I'd just love to
start here with these images, with this book. Can you
take us back to the spark of inspiration that generated
the idea for the photo arc?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I can't you bet. First, I wanted to introduce the
space I'm in. I'm up at our family cabin in Minnesota.
I've been run off of the living room by my family,
who insisted I record this up in a bedroom so
that they can eat breakfast and talk like normal human beings.
So that's why I'm sitting here next to a bed. Anyway,
(02:20):
the photo Wark animals. Everth is basically a twentieth anniversary
edition of a book that we did long ago, at
least ten years ago, I think now, or if not more.
It just looks at biodiversity. We photographed reptiles and amphibians,
aquatic invertebrates like coral and anemones and sponges. We photograph insects.
(02:44):
We photograph reptiles, birds, mammals, six classes basically, and this
is a celebration of biodiversity we're trying to do through
these simple portraits. We're based trying to get people to
care about something other than with each other and screaming
over every ballgame that comes on to TV. Right like,
(03:05):
let's think about life on Earth. So that's the purpose.
August now, right now is our twentieth anniversary. We've crossed
the eighteen thousand species mark and we're on our way
towards nineteen thousand. Sounds like a lot, but considering there's
more than a million species described so far, got a
long way to go. I'm under no illusion that I
(03:25):
can do it. My son Cole goes on all the
foreign trips with me. He'll take over when I'm done.
We work at Zoos and aquariums, and we work at
wildlife rehab centers, private collections, university study labs, wherever we
can find animals. But we also work in the wild
and so to speak, if people are out doing a
scientific survey, if they're doing a bird banding, if they're
(03:48):
doing a bio blitz or a stream assessment somewhere, we
try to be there in as many cases as possible
to photograph these animals as they're passing through human hands.
They can go through our little aquarium with battery powered light,
they can go to these animals can go into our
little shooting tent and then they get released in just
a few minutes. So the name of the game is
to try to show what biodiversity look like at this
(04:09):
point in time and keep humanity from driving everything or
a lot of it to extinction. Is about the future
of life on Earth. And I don't really know if
that answered your question fully, but that's our mission. Man.
We use black and white backgrounds to eliminate all distractions.
Just look these animals in the eye, so people get
a feeling that there's great beauty and intelligence there and
(04:31):
they're so worthy of preserving. And also without any size
comparison on these plain backgrounds. You know, the tiger beetle
is the same size as a tiger. An ant is
the size of an elephant. And that is very intentional,
because most animals will fit in the palm of your hand.
They are not big. They are not gorillas, they're not rhinos.
They are toads and minnows and sparrows and earthworms and
(04:55):
anything that you can't really get a good look at
you can get a good look at on these black
my backgrounds you can. So we care about the little stuff.
We care about all of it big or small. We
love them all, as we say, But really the goal
is for me to use my life and then my
son to use his life to try to just get
people to care. I mean, the thing that most people
(05:16):
don't understand, rob is that without all these other species,
we are doomed. We want to pretend like we're king
of the forest all the time, and in a way,
we certainly are. We can certainly alter the earth, but
we have to have ants to survive. We have to
have insects survive. We have to have pollinating insects to
bring us fruits and vegetables. We just have to have
(05:37):
a stable ocean, a stable planet. We have to have
rainforests to regulate the rainfall that we get around the
globe and deliver it and timely amounts to the farms
where we know how to grow food to feed ourselves.
It just is folly to think that we can doom
one plant and animal species after another to extinction and
think that we'll be just fine. It won't work that way.
(05:58):
So we're we're in a non political campaigns to public
education campaign to showcase what life looks like now with
the hope that people will wake up in time and
see that there's great not only great value and beauty
and saving these things, but it's a threat to our
very existence to drive these things away. We won't make
(06:19):
it without them.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well said, well said. Now these these images. If anyone
out there cannot picture these already, I recommend you know,
go online look up these photo arc images with these
the stark black and white backgrounds. Really, it's amazing the
character that you're able to capture in the in these
(06:41):
animals and in their their faces, and for the ones
that you definitely have faces. I was wondering. I was
chatting with my wife about these images. She's a photographer
and she's a big fan of yours, and she was
reminded of Richard Aviden's portraits of people against the stark
white background.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Was he an inspiration on your work?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Totally? Yeah, I stand on the shoulder of others. They
are giants out there. Yeah. Avdon his portrait Divimo with
elephants from the late sixties in Paris Is was a
big inspiration to me. His American West series also was
a big inspiration to me that they did in the
latter part of his career. James Baylog came along and
(07:22):
just knocked it out of the park with his personal
vision of vanishing wildlife that ran in as a cover
story in the Geographic in the late eighties, animals on
black and white background, shot as only he can, very
artfully done and really just find art all the way,
but with a real message. And then Susan Middleton and
David Lichwager and their work just outstanding in terms of
(07:45):
especially honing in on features of plants to give plants
personalities and insects and the small things there, really small
things that make the world tick. They understood that and
they were at it long before I and they do
it a lot better than I do. But they're huge,
and you know, there's lots of people that do these
types of portraits, and power to them. I wish there
(08:07):
were a thousand people doing this type of thing or more.
The more people that can see these animals and see
how glorious they are and how important they are, the better.
There's no time to lose, really, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Do you remember what your first portrait was for the project?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, it was a naked mole rat at the Lincoln
Children's Zoo about a mile from my house. I just
my wife was recovering from breast cancer. I'd taken a
year off to stay home with her and be a
dad finally to my three kids, and they were little,
and when they were in school, I just would go
down to that zoo and I just asked to photograph
something that wouldn't run off on me. And we used
(08:54):
a white zoo cutting board in the kitchen and the
zoo kitchen and just they put a naked mole rat
out there and they're kind of half blind and they
kind of stand there and look around and they're odd looking.
So I got pictures of that and a few frogs.
That day. Something like that. But yeah, that's how we
started and that was more than eighteen thousand species ago.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Wow. Now when you're you're shooting these these animals, are
you using like strobe lights or is it constant light?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Yeah? No, I'm using Ellen chrome flash heads, thousand watt
Ellen chrome flash heads. I've got a battery powered pack
so I can shoot bio blitzes in the field or
bird bandings in the field. I just need a portable
table to put my little shooting my cloth shooting tent
on where the animals go in, and then powered lights
as well. We just use white pvcboard from home remodel
(09:42):
places and we glue black velvet to one side. It's
white on the other. Pretty straightforward, and yeah, the shooting
process hasn't changed that much. We just we get our
shooting tents from BNH Photo and buy our black velvet
by the bolt and really try to work with with
rehabers and with biologists around the world, zoos aquariums, private collections.
(10:06):
We just really try to get to know people haven't
trust us. We've never harmed an animal yet, and we
share the pictures. We were grant funded by National Geographic
all the way, so we can share pictures with them,
they can do what they want pretty much with the pictures,
and then we try to also give lyft. We you know,
we have a lot of backing from Geographic and Disney
(10:29):
is part of Geographic, and so just the Disney, the
main Disney is to Graham feed is three hundred and
fifty million people, and I think their total social reaches
about five hundred million. So if somebody is doing good
in the world, we can celebrate that. You know, we
go to good zoos where there's an abundant attention and care.
We celebrate those. I mean, nobody likes a bad zoo,
and I will go anywhere I have to to shoot
(10:51):
if it's a matter of getting the species into the
photo work or never seeing it again. But we celebrate
good zoos and we can really give lyft to their
efforts that way. Our eighteen thousand species, for example, was
a red hand fish from Tasmania and the lady that
ran that breeding program there's more in this one room
where they breed them at two hundred and fifty specimens
(11:14):
than there is in the wild. I think they're in
the low double digits now in the wild. And she
was they just live in one Bay and off the
coast of Tasmania, and she wrote to me after that
was announced and she said, this came along at a
great time. We've heard from people all over the world.
Our grant fundings do to run out, and we've got
a lot of interest now and people wanting to help us.
Fish are small, just about like that, but they've evolved,
(11:36):
these front fins. They've turned them into kind of hands
that they used to walk on the ocean floor, and
they're very cute and charismatic expression. They seem to have
an expression on their face. And it's very satisfying when
I hear that. When we started the project twenty years ago,
social media just wasn't a thing, so all we could
do was offer pictures to people. And now we can
(11:58):
offer a lot more than that. We can introduce their efforts,
their stewardship, their animals, their efforts to save habitat to
a global audience, which is very satisfying, very satisfying.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Now some of these animals are huge. Which animals have
been the most logistically challenging the photograph.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Chimps are tough. Chimps are really tough. I mean, I'm
not working with trained chimps for the movie industry. You know,
we go to zoos that may have this one subspecies
of chimp that we don't have from North Africa, you know,
and they're really smart, fast, agile, all the things. I'm not.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I think I saw some footage on one of the documentaries,
or maybe it was a Ted X talk that you
gave or Ted talk. Yeah, but the chimp just immediately
tore down the background.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, that was early on when I thought I'd use
white paper. That doesn't work with apes. Chimps are tough.
Big animals require a bit of prep by the zoo.
Like the Omaha Zoo painted an off exhibit space black
and white for their elephant and baby. They knew they
could park mom on a dime by giving her her
(13:05):
favorite treats. Then the baby just kind of moved through
its legs the whole time and as cute as can be.
And Indianapolis Suit did the same thing with they had
it on black though they had a new baby elephant.
So we did that on black. But the zoo had
to basically create a black space, either with paint on
the walls and floor or with sheets, supply wood or
(13:25):
other materials that turn the walls black. It was just
at the Minnesota Zoo in Minneapolis on the way up
here to the cabin, and scouted out their bull moose corral.
They have a bull moose that we've been watching for
a number of years. He's now big enough to be photographed,
but the windows. So we talked about how we were
going to black out this stall that he goes to,
(13:45):
how we're going to light him and we can lure
him in place with brows with his favorite greenery to eat.
But you know, there's a little bitty window between the
time when the velvet sheds off of his antlers and
makes him look very moose like and when rut stars arts,
which is in October. There's like a four week three
week window. Once rut starts, you don't want to be
(14:06):
around a bull moose. And so there's a little window
in September. So we'll come back and get that. And yeah,
it's always something, but for big animals, the zoo has
to prep some For small animals size of a duck
or smaller, we can just use my little shooting tents
that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
There is there another animal on the list that you
really want to photograph, but it just hasn't come together yet.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, we don't really have We have a list of
the things we've shot, but there isn't really a list
of the things we haven't shot, unless it's a state
specific thing, like I have a list of all the
freshwater fish I still need from Nebraska and from Minnesota.
I have a list of the birds I need from America.
But other than that, it's pretty much wide open. Whatever
they get, and that we usually get an We approach
(14:50):
a zoo or an aquarium or rehab places and say
what do you have in care, and then we run
their inventory against our list and we quickly come up
with well, these are the ones we need. And they'll
say they'll say how many. I'll say, well, these fifteen,
and they'll say, well, we can do these ten. I'm like,
that's fine. Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. I'm going to
go there on Wednesday since I'm up here in Minnesota.
(15:11):
It's about ninety minute drive. And they had a list
of about forty species we need, mostly in vertebrates like
coral sponges, that kind of things, things that live in
the Great Lakes. And they had twelve fish we needed
and they say we think we can catch nine of
those fish. They're small, and we'll put them in my
little tank, my little Plexi tank, photograph them and put
(15:31):
them back and they think so we think we can
do about out of maybe say forty, We think we
can end up getting twenty five or so for the day,
and that's fine. You know, we'll visit again someday. Yeah,
it's kind of a process, but it's something I do
every day of the year. I'm always running inventories or
thinking about where to go next. But yeah, in terms
(15:53):
of a list, there's over a million species described, so
we don't want to burden anybody like that. We just
have our list of eighteen thousand and Caesier for us
to just go through it once we get their inventories.
Compare it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Now, you've I'm based here in Atlanta, Georgia. You've shot
down down here in Atlanta I have.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
There's a fabulous place down there. Well, the Atlanta Zoo
is great too. I worked at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens
for a number of years with a guy named Mark Mandica,
who was in charge of the frog pod. These frogs
they brought back from Panama when the Kittrid fungus was
spreading and he had the very last rabs fringed limb
tree frog and I photo got that animal a couple times.
(16:31):
A wonderful animal. They named Tuffy because he outlived all
life expectancy and he's gone now, so That'specius extinct sadly.
But we got him up on the side of the
Vatican with the Pope watching. We got him up on
the Empire State Building and on the un Building, so
that's cool. With his call, Mark recorded his call the
one time it was ever recorded. Mark has gone on
(16:53):
to found the Amphibian Foundation in the Atlanta area. Actually
they're based out of Decatur, and that is the only
center that's devoted to just to amphibians. It's a big
education center and that's really awesome. So he does great
work with breeding frosted flatwood salamanners and gopher frogs, things
(17:13):
that are very highly endangered and they that's a great
place that I've been several times, and they deserve our
support too. If anybody's curious. Amphibianfoundation dot org. It's a
great place to support. Love them.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And yeah, Mark is a friend of the show. We've
had him on before and I.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Really can't think any say anything more highly about the guy.
He's just he really really cares. He and his wife,
Crystal run it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Great, great place, and they do day camps for kids
in the summer and try to get kids connected to nature.
This is the other thing too, I was wanting to mention.
You know, guys like me old enough. We grew up
in the woods and you know, having a marsh to
play in and learn about tadpoles, you know, along a
stream whatever. Most kids today are urban and they don't
(17:59):
have that. And so going to a place like the
Amphibian Foundation is a big deal. Hands on with a turtle,
hands on with a non venomous snake, or to see
how these frogs are bred, what the work they do,
Why it's so important to save reptiles and amphibians. That's
a big, big deal. We have to get future generations
to care more about animals than we did, not less,
(18:22):
because we didn't save them very well. This is a
big deal to Mark and his crew there.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Now you used to do all sorts of field work
outside of the arc, Yes, for GEO and for other
publications as well, right.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah, Yeah, Audubon and net Geo and Nature Conservancy. Yeah,
it was a globe trot and field photographer for about
seventeen years. For the geographic alone, it was more than
thirty stories all in the wild, not touching anything, all
in the wild. And then when my wife got sick,
that that changed. I just figured that life short and
(19:08):
if I wanted to really highlight small species, I better
get on it. So I started doing these hybrid stories
where it was partially in the field and also to
show what these animals are up against or by all
just working with these animals to his story on wolves
and grizzly bears and the National Wildlife Refuge System and
the Endangered Species Act. And then once I started to
(19:28):
shift to photo arc, I did these hybrids where it
was it was some studio portraiture and some stuff in
the wild, and now it's just studio portraits. That's it.
Nothing else, that's it.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Do you do you do you miss the adventure of
like the pure field?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
No, no, no way, no way. I did not. I
did time. You know, like people are like, don't you
want to go out on safari? Don't you want to
take a hike. It's beautiful at the top of the mountain, nope.
I actually wrote a memoir. We just finished it. It'll
be out this spring, also by National graffic book. It's
called Dream Job Confessions of a National Geographic Photographer. It
(20:05):
is not a dream job too often, but it is
a lot of work. It's not vacation, and it is
people will enjoy the stories in it, I think, but
it's it's just not what people think. In a way,
it is a dream job, obviously because you get to
do something that hopefully makes the world a better place.
But it is the best part of our day, to
(20:26):
be honor honest, is dinner, because it's meant we got
through the day and everything's cool and we started again.
But most of the time we don't see our We
never see our hotel in the light. It's always in
the dark. We leave in the dark, we come back
in the dark. We work it straight through. We don't
take any days off. We're usually gone three weeks. My
son is a tank. He is bulletproof. He's going to
(20:46):
take over for me, my son Cole. He goes with
me on all the foreign trips. He'll take over for me.
I'm too old to do it anymore. Feel good now,
But he's there and he goes with me, and he'll
you know, but he doesn't complain. I might complain a
little bit. But if it's a choice between getting back
to the hotel early enough or skip and lunch, you know,
(21:07):
like we leave species on the table, that is a
miserable feeling. We've gone a long way, and we want
to tell their stories, no matter whether they're a little
stream fish or a graatfish or even a snail. We
want to tell their stories. That's why we've gone all
that way, and that's what we do. But in terms
of being in the field and missing those days, there's
a lot of pressure. Like I remember being given an
(21:30):
assignment to do the Gulf Coast of America, and this
was back in the early days. So they said, okay, great,
you got twenty seven weeks of assignment time, have it
done in one calendar year from now. Good luck, that's it.
And then they get it's like one of those courses
in college where your entire grade is based on a
(21:51):
final exam, no other grading material. So you give a
show to your editors at the magazine and you either
live or die. Either lives or dies, and so it's
the same with a story on grizzly bears. You got
eight weeks. Haven't done in one calendar year eight weeks?
Good luck? How would you go about making enough pictures
(22:12):
of grizzly bears that are interesting to warnt a story
in National Geographic Magazine? How would you? What would you even?
Where would you even start? Like? What would you do
grizzly bears in North America? Good luck? It's not what
people think, you like, rob, what would you what would
you do? What would you do to do grizzly bears
in North America?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean I'd be a little terrified even go looking
for them.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I think I was terrified. And by the way, you know,
just long lens pictures of bears in a field, that's
not going to cut it anymore that it will not
do it, or wolves or koala's. You know, I did
stories on all these things on on the you know,
National Wildlife Refuge System. Like you have to do pictures
(22:56):
that combine photojournalism and art. The pictures hold for a
few months. You have to do pictures that are new
and surprising and different. It's really super difficult. Like, it's
not what people think. Long ones pictures don't cut it.
If we have time, I'll just tell you a quick story.
A picture I'm proud of. I'm not very proud of
(23:18):
most of my pictures, you know, they all need work.
But there was one where I problem solved. It involved
not having anything in my ears playing. It involves having
my radio off of my car. And it evolved about
I don't know, an eight hour drive across Wyoming I
was thinking about. I was assigned to do cold bed
methane extraction in the Inner Mountain West and I had
(23:39):
eight weeks. That was an average amount of signent, so
drilling for natural gas in the American West, eight weeks go,
what do you do? What do you do? And I
got that job because I needed the work. I took
that job because I needed the paycheck at a family
And so I know, and I can see how you're
looking at me, like, I hope he doesn't ask me
(24:00):
what I do. Yeah, I didn't know, and so I
got into it. I flew out there and you know,
just looked at drilling and hung out with some well drillers,
and hung out with some environmental folks and photograph stage
grouse that are out there in drilling country. Anyway, I
(24:20):
thought about the fact that the gas is held in
the ground by groundwater. It's held in the gas is
kept trapped in ancient coal seams by groundwater. So to
free up the gas, the mining companies often will pump
that groundwater out and into a river. Sometimes it's clean,
sometimes it's filthy. It's filthy it kills all the fish.
(24:41):
So I thought, how do we illustrate the fish that
are at risk in Wyoming from drilling? And not all
drillers are, you know, like and I burned natural gas
in my home, so this is not anti natural gas.
I just wanted to show what these fish look like.
And they lived in the main river that goes through
drilling company in Wyoming was called the powder River because
(25:03):
it had from pioneer times, it had a lot of
dissolved soils in it. It looked like chocolate milk. You
can't see that far. How do you illustrate the fish
in the Powder River? So I shut off my radio.
I didn't have any podcasts going. I just drove. I
had to drive to Utah from Wyoming for something else,
and it was like an eight hour drive. And by
(25:24):
the time I got to the other end of that drive,
I had it figured out. I thought, Okay, first of all,
the fish need to be in clear water. How do
we get them in clear water so we can show them?
I bet the state of Wyoming has a natural history department.
Most states too. So I called the guy that was
in charge of non game fish, the fish that live
(25:45):
in the Powder River, these little minnows and days and shiners,
And I said, do you guys ever survey the Powder
River to see what's in there? He says, yeah, we're
doing a rapid biological assessment all next summer to see
what's in the Powder River to see because we've never
even done that, to collect fish for our museum. And
I'm like, great, And so I thought. I told him
(26:07):
what I planned to do, and he said, yeah, that
sounds great, that sounds great. Can we use the pictures?
I said sure? So I met with his crew. It
was like six months later. I met with his crew
on the Powder River and they were running a sane,
these two ladies running a sane or a long wide
net and getting fish out of the Powder River that
they were going to put in their museum. They were
going to put them in jars of alcohol. And I
had had custom made kind of a couple of thermopane
(26:32):
windows that were about They were pretty big, like thirty
inches wide twenty four inches tall, but only about that
thick little, you know, half inch thick, big enough for
minnows to go in, but they couldn't turn around on me.
And I put air bowlers in there so they'd be comfortable,
and they kind of schooled and they swam in a circle,
and so I could see them clearly, here's the minnows
(26:52):
of the Powder River. And I put them on a
couple saw horses that i'd modified with brackets or holders.
So I sat that window full of fish on the
saw horses on a bluff overlooking the Powder River. And
there were white, puffy clouds in a blue sky, and
so it looked like these fish were flying through the
sky and through the landscape and swimming across the vast, beautiful,
(27:14):
untouched landscape of Wyoming with the powdered river winding through it.
And it looked good. And then in the caption we
explain what we're doing. But it's not a photoshop thing.
There was no photoshop back then. It's just this picture
that took a while to solve. But that is typical
for a national geographic photograph. In the field, you have
(27:34):
to problem solve. You have to figure out a way
to make new and interesting and surprising pictures that tell
a story that engage people in a very noisy world.
How do you engage people to stop and read a magazine.
That's our job. Well, the same applies today for the photowark.
We have this task of getting somebody to care about
a snail, to care about a minnow, to care about
(27:56):
a sparrow, or a toad or something that lives in
murky water or even in the in soil. That is
our job. And so what I figured starting out, eye
contact is really important. If an animal has eyes, let's
look them in the eye, and let's have them fill
the frame so they're all the same size. You know,
that worm that came out of the mud, he will
do with something that's an artful shape, and we'll compare
(28:19):
him in a book someday with a snake and the
same shape or the same color. So we think that
the more pictures, the more species the ARC has in it,
the more possibilities there are to highlight some of the
species that are very overlooked yet so important, like freshwater mussels.
They're living aquatic canaries in a coal mine. They are
(28:40):
telling us their water is so filthy they can't live
in it anymore. We all drink water. We should care.
The more we get into the photo arc, the bigger
it can become in terms of being able to tell
the stories about life on Earth.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, just the one book here, the photo Arc, Animals
of Earth. I love how you open it up and
you'll have on opposing pages like two, you know, very
different animals. You know, you'll have a mammal on one
side and maybe you know, you know, a fish or
or an insect on the other end. But there'll be
something about the two that lines up, be it like
(29:15):
the form or the shape or something about the shots.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And there were two designers worked on the book. Melissa
Ferris did the original and then Lisa Gibson at the
Geographic did the other one. And we added a new
signature or a new section of the book, like sixty
four more pages something like that. And what's interesting is
there's a there. There's one picture that Elisa and I
both really liked when we were designing the new book,
(29:38):
the new version of this book. And it's not something
you think. It's a ball of red blood worms that
were being used to feed fish at some nature center
I went to. They were just in this ball and
so I shot it at a diagonal with with worms
coming off the back end. They're tiny little things, but
they formed this ball and so the way and I
(30:00):
shot at a diagonal, so it looked like a comet
streaking across the time. We were both really into that,
you know, like, and it's two pages in the book.
So it's great that they have in their books division.
They have very creative team that is into the odd
and loves to showcase the underdogs. We're really about the underdogs.
We'll shoot, we photograph tigers, we photographed bears and lions,
(30:22):
but we're really into the underdogs, the things that people
will never see without us. And that is the case.
I'm afraid for at least eighty percent of the things
in this in these books that we do and in
these exhibits and in my talks, easy eighty percent, probably
more than that. Ninety percent of these animals people will
have never heard of without the photog arc telling their stories.
(30:43):
And so it's a great honor and a great responsibility,
and it's how I'll spend the rest of my life,
you know, as in my son will too. But we
think it's worth it, and it's it's like, there's this
great ts Eliot quote that I think about all the
time all the time. What good is it? What good
is it? Right? He said, for us, there is only
(31:03):
the trying. The rest is not our business. And so
I think that's true. My little interpretation of that is
I'm trying till the day I die. I'm trying. My
son will too. So if that is, if people pay
attention to it or not, will be long gone. We
(31:23):
don't know. We hope they do, because it's really folly
to think we can do them one species to extinction
after another, not just animals, with plants too. I think
that will be just fine. It won't work that way.
Food doesn't just come from the grocery store. It comes
from a stable planet, and same for water. So we
just are hopeful that this does some good and that
(31:46):
is a great way to live. You know, you know
name of that memoir dream job. It's a little bit sarcastic,
but really, to me, it is a dream job if
you love what you do and you think that you're
making the world better, and we do so it's good.
It's good. No regrets.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, I love how like your images and the images
in this book in particular, it's like, I mean, they're
just so arresting. They capture your attention. They maybe make
you give an animal a second or third glance that
you again, you know, maybe you're just completely dismissive of
or otherwise.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
We hope, We hope, man. That is our big driving thing.
People do not understand the train wreck that is coming.
They're starting to see it now. Violent storms, hotter every year,
is hotter than the last, more fighting, sea levels come up.
Eighty percent of the human population around the world lives
within one hundred miles of the coast or so, massive
(32:42):
human migration, displacement of people, people not able to make
a living, getting desperate, like these environmental problems are going
to result in real human suffering and real problems for
us and drive our economies into the ground. Some of
us and we don't really get into that, but we do.
We do. Just really want people to appreciate the fact
that without bees and butterflies and ants, we can't have
(33:04):
pollinating insects. We're not gonna have food, so you know,
at least fruits and vegetables. So we, in our little
quiet way, are trying to get people to fall in
love with nature as we have. That's it. That's it,
and there's not much more to it than that. We
are a long term education campaign financed by National Geographic
(33:26):
We have the best shot of anybody because of their
because they're funding it, because of the microphone, the megaphone
that we have through NG and Disney to try to
get people to wake up and care about saving habitat.
That's where it's all at for us, tundra, prairies, oceans.
(33:47):
Try to get them to care. It's a big deal.
But you know, in the end, if we're just monkeys
looking at ourselves in the mirror all day long, halla
stories over, we hope not and we go about our
business and we don't get down about it. We are
positive every day and every way we can be. We
(34:08):
do all we can right now with what we got,
and we got a lot. We got a lot, and
most of the world's biodiversity is still here, it's still intact.
But we have to take the pressure off of it.
We must take the pressure off of it in various ways.
And so that's just kind of what we do. We
don't browbeat people. We hope that they We hope that
(34:29):
they love birds, We hope they love butterflies, we hope
they love seeing deer, whatever it is that people like.
We hope they like to fish, whatever. We just want
to connect with people in ways that we think that
it's healthy, good for us, lowers our blood pressure, and
isn't it nice knowing that these animals are out there still,
that they're forced to hike in and the world's a
(34:50):
good place, you know, just like we think positive about
things and that it can be going into the future.
We just think the world's a good place now. Not everywhere,
of course, but we believe in people wanting to help.
And since I'm on my high horse here, I tell
you I think that there's great capacity in human beings
to want to help. We really do. As part of
(35:11):
our species, you know, we want to fight, we're warlike,
we're tribal as hell, but we really if you see
what happens when there's a catastrophe somewhere, you know, a
terrible cyclone hits Bangladesh, Supplies come in from all over
the world. Help comes in from all over the world.
Like we really do want to help, but we don't
(35:32):
know what to do. What do we do? How can
we do any Well, there's tons of stuff we can do.
Just for example, if you have a lawn, think about
planting native plants to help pollinating insects. Quit porn poison
all over the ground, porn insecticide on the ground, killing bugs.
If you love birds, birds feed their young insects. They
(35:54):
don't feed their young seeds, they feed their babies insects,
And so if you're wanting insecticide on your lawn to
keep it looking a certain way, you're killing off the
bird's abilities to bring off young. Quit pouring herbicide on
your lawn. You need some diversity in your lawn. You
need flowering plants, you know, to allow insects to thrive
(36:14):
as well. There's just lots of things people can do,
and that people don't think about the fact that they
can do a ton in their hometown. You know, if
they have a little campaign they can get going to
get their state highway department or county roads department or
city parks to plant more native plants and then not
mow when the ground nesting birds are trying to pull
off young in the spring. Just don't mow all the time,
(36:36):
then they have to looks like a golf course all
the time. That's a big deal. That helps insects, that
helps birds. Like a lot of common sense things people
can do if they think about it, but most people
don't know what they can do. Well, there's tons if
people want to go to my website, which is Joelsartory
dot com, there's a frequently asked questions page and right
(36:56):
there are lots of good things people can do from
their own hometowns to make the world. And they can
also get a sign book through our store. That's the
some place you can get sign books as through our store.
But you know, come to it just to learn about
what you can do in your own town make the
world better.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So a lot of the like the reasons for hope
that you're you're outlining here, they seem they seem to
be based in sort of like rekindling, like a natural
inborn association with nature and animals that we're all going
to have, right, which it reminds me a lot of
of what EO. Wilson had to So I know you
were you're a bigger admirer of.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
As well, very much. So yeah, yeah, yeah, he and
I got to He was in at Gorenghosa National Park
in Mozambique, and my son Cole and I were there
with him for a couple of weeks. We just basically
sat at his feet every day when he wasn't writing
and soaked it up, you know, when he was writing.
I mean that's like to go up and talk. We
(37:52):
never made small talk, went up and just chit chatted
with him, unless it was at a meal at dinner,
because it'd be like interrupting Lincoln when he was writing
the Gettysburg address. You know, very smart guy and he
taught He taught us both we can't live without ants.
Ants are such a big deal in terms they clean
up the environment, They aerate the soil, They provide food
(38:12):
for all sorts of other life forms. If ants went away,
so would humans, without a doubt. He said. He also
was the one that taught me about the value of
converting the ornamental lawn or just people having green grass
back to native native plants, nectar bearing plants from monarch, butterflies, milkweed.
He taught us about that. It's a really good teacher
(38:33):
and a very kind person who insisted that we call
him ed, not doctor Wilson, just a great guy. Yeah,
an honor to hang out with that guy. I walked
past his room. It was after dark, he'd already eaten.
His curtains were open in his room at this lodge
we stayed at in Goring Gosa, and I could see
(38:53):
him he sniffing grasshoppers that he'd collected earlier that day
on part of a bio blitz. And I went back
to I was my way to the dining hall and
I went and sat down with some people who had
become friends, and I told him what I saw, and
I said I should go over there and take his picture.
And they're like, you know what, it's after dark. Leave
him alone, man, leave him alone. I said, I bet
you I can get over there and make a picture
(39:14):
that gets into the magazine based on what I just saw.
Because he had a big pile of bags of grasshoppers.
I bet you get in and out of there, and
the time it takes to play a song on the radio.
Bet you I could because I had my gear with me.
I was just getting in from the field. They said, okay,
we'll time you. So I went in there, knocked on
the door. He said, yeah, Joel, come on in. I said,
what are you doing? Why are you smelling grasshoppers? He said, well,
(39:35):
there's a genus of grasshoppers called foam grasshoppers that when
they're irritated, they emit this really acidic smelling foam, and
so I'm picking them up that irritates them, smelling them,
and then I'm sorting them into that genus. A lot
of these are new to me. I was like, do
you care if I get a picture? He says no, no,
I said, just go on, go on with what you're doing.
So click, click click got him sniffing a couple of
(39:56):
grasshoppers in the light of a sconce in his room.
Next week, desk I was back at that table on
they time it was like three minutes twenty seven seconds.
I'm like, great, there you go, and it made the magazine.
But he was just a very gracious, great man, you know,
won the Pulitzer Prize a time or two, and just
a fantastic human being.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
They send me a couple of a couple of your
books here to look at for this interview. This is
one of them. It's a it's a board book National
Geographic Photo Arc Bodies QUERPOS I'm going to pass this
one on to my nephew when I'm done with it,
because he's a toddler. So kids obviously have such that
a natural connection with animals. Do you see like these
(40:47):
these kids books being like a like a vital part
of the photo arc.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh. Absolutely. One of the reasons that I'm excited about
him is kid's books that my parents gave me led
to a lifelong fascination with animals, and I believe it
or not of any extinction. When I was about eight
years old, they gave me a time Life book on
the birds, and in the back was a section on
extinct US birds. There was a big, full page picture
of Martha, the very last passenger pigeon, with a little
(41:13):
sign next to it as she was on display in
the Smithsonian. You know, last of her kind died in
nineteen fourteen Cincinnati Zoo. And you know, back then I thought, well,
people just didn't know what they were doing. But now
they knew full well. We had the telegraph to tell
each other where the last great flocks were, and they
got market hunted down to nothing on purpose because they
were worth a little bit of money, not much, a
couple pennies apiece. So, you know, kids, introducing children to
(41:38):
nature right off the bat when they're toddlers is a
great idea. And we have a little granddaughter back at
home who's like nineteen months twenty months. She loves those books.
They're waterproof, you know, spill anything on them or drool
on them or whatever. She goes through them again and
again first thing she runs to in the house. Or
these are these kids board books that geographics done. So
this one's on body shapes and it's also since Spanish.
(42:02):
All these books are in English and Spanish, and so
we really feel like if we can get them into
the tent of conservation young there's nothing wrong with that.
It's okay to care about nature. It's good, it's good,
it's refreshing. You know. We feel we've got them for
life if they if they care, you know, and they
won't care if they've never even met these things. So
(42:24):
it's very important to allow them to meet these animals
at a very young age and come back to them
again and again. I've looked at that the time Life
book on the birds that had that extinct that extinction section.
I've looked at that book a thousand times in my life,
but that the other day, and it's just really it's
an important reminder of what we stand to lose and
(42:45):
what we should celebrate, why we should care, you know,
it's the big thing. I get a question, you know,
I get a question all the time, you know, what
good is it? I hear that all the time, you know,
not all the time, but sometimes what good is it?
Tough crowd ask me that? But I say, I don't know?
What good am I? I don't say what good? Are
you asking a question like that? But I say I
(43:07):
don't know? I mean, what good am I? I don't know.
I think that all of them have an important role
to place, to play over time in our survival. And
you know, like if fish can't live in the streams,
why would we think the water is any good to drink?
And we have to have water, right, we have to
have bees and butterflies to bring us fruits and vegetables.
All the stories, you know, but the reality of it
(43:31):
to me, wouldn't the world be a greatly impoverished place
if we allow these creatures to vanish? Wouldn't it be
a poorer world? I mean, we stand guard over works
of art twenty four hours a day, And when some
painting gets stolen out of an art museum in Amsterdam,
we hear about it for months. Where is it, Who's
got it? Are they going to catch them? And yet
(43:52):
we'd let these amazing works of art, like some beautiful
bird go to extinction. That's just not acceptable and I
don't understand it and I don't accept it. So these kids' books,
back to your original question, these kids books are super
important in terms of getting people on board and getting
them to care for the rest of their lives. That's
(44:13):
what kids books do. It's not just for the kid
of today, but it really really gets a strong sense
that I love these things and I want these things
into our hearts, you know. And it's a great thing
because these kids will be landowners, or they will own
corporations that have the choice of whether or not to
bulldoze that last place or whether simpler, easier choice, and
(44:35):
a very reasonable one, is should we plant the yard
or the lawns at our corporate headquarters to native prairie? Yes,
Yes you should, Yes you should. It's an easy thing
to do, and people out on their breaks from work
are going to love it. They're going to walk around,
they're going to tell their buddies that they saw them
on our butterfly out there today. And you know, it's
(44:57):
a really good thing and so much more interesting just
green grass. It really has golf courses, could do a
world of good city parks. There's lots we can do. Now.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I want to be respectful if you're your time here,
But there's so many, so many questions I could ask
you based on past talks that I've seen, So I'm
just gonna ask a couple of quick ones here. First
of all, tell us about spitting cobras, your encounters with them.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Will you see the sixty minutes piece is that the
thing spitting cobras. They're interesting and then they developed venom.
They can deliver it through their fangs, but they can
also spit it, and it's good for a couple of things.
One is if you spit venom in the predator's eyes
that they're trying to get you and blind them, they
(45:45):
can't really find you to eat you. That's handy. And
they also can venomate prey that way, Like if they say,
see a desert kangaroo rat, they spit their venom in
their face and then that rat can't see anything and
get it pretty easily. So but that's not something that
I want to happen to me. But I have to
photograph them, so I wear goggles or a face shield
(46:08):
with glasses, and then I just I'm good. You know,
I don't want to be invenomated, but I work at
a respectful distance. I ask the keepers, what can I do?
Where can I be? Don't let me get too close.
I kind of lose the sense of where I am
with this camera box in front of my face. And
uh yeah, so far, no problem. But that spitting cobra
(46:28):
venom is really hard to get off a lenses, So
I use a filter, a glass screw and filter whenever
i'm working with those to keep the If I do
get it invenomated and I can't wipe it off right away,
you really want to watch it. You don't want any cuts.
You don't want to get it in your mouth. You
get a little cut in your mouth, you don't want
to get that stuff in your bloodstream at all. So
you just have to be kind of careful. And yeah, yeah,
(46:51):
I'll be glad when I'm done with the cobras and
the mambas. We're getting there.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
You've had stowaways before, right in your photo gear.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
I have, you've on your homework. Yeah. I remember going
to the International Rattlesnake Museum in downtown Albuquerque and we
and we had a snake, a rattlesnake get into the
bottom of my camera bag and we had to somehow
get the lenses and cameras out to get to the snake.
You know. I also had mamas are really good at climbing.
(47:20):
A lot of vipers are good at climbing, but mamas
are really fast and smart. And had something like that,
I think it was a cobra get inside my climbed,
wrapped its body around my light stand and went right
up and into this big soft box I had with
this kind of waffle grid on the front of it
to modify the light going straight. It was really hard
to extract that snake out of there, and I was
(47:42):
also worried that he was going to bust the flashead
inside because there's exposed glass there. Oh we got him out, okay,
But yeah, those aren't Those aren't fun. We're not looking
for drama. Were just looking to get the pictures quickly
and get out, and we're just not looking for anything
out of the out of the ordinary. We just want
(48:04):
it to be drama free, get done, go ab dinner,
and start again the next day.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
I have to ask you about another photograph. This is
one that I believe it's on your website. And my
wife showed this one to May years ago, and you know,
really wanted to tell me the story behind it. So
I have to ask about the mosquito feet photograph.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
I figured you were going to ask about that one.
So I had a boss who was You know, when
you work with an editor at the geographic they're kind
of right with you. They don't go in the field
with you much, but there every day we talk what
do you get? What do you get? What you get?
And it was a story on Alaska's North Slope, and
I had a discussion with her. I hadn't made a
good picture in about three days. You can't have too
(48:42):
many days without making good pictures and still work for them.
The lines a mile long. People wanted to work for them.
So I hadn't made a picture in about three days.
But I remembered this place I was at. It was
the most mosquito filled spot I'd been to on Alaska's
North Slope, and I've been all over the slope. It
was a place called Tulik Research Station. It had It
was up on a series of bluffs or rolling sand
(49:03):
sandy kind of hills, and I just remember the bugs
were so thick. We couldn't even talk. We couldn't open
our mouths. We had to wear head netting and then
we could kind of talk, but it was like just buzzing.
Sounded like you were by a highway. There were so
many mosquitoes buzz just clouds of them, and so even
when it was windy and cold, they were right there.
(49:25):
And so I thought, you know, if I ever get
in a jam or I'm not making good pictures of
anything going on up here, I'm going to drive to
Tulk to that hill that was so bad, and I'm
going to sit there and I'm going to take off
my shoes and socks and just let them eat up
my feet. Because I'd had my feet in the magazine
two times before, and I thought, third times a charm,
Let me get my let me get my feet in
(49:46):
the magazine again. So I took off my shoes and socks.
I duct taped my jeans inside my jeans so they
couldn't get up my pant legs and I just put
my two big, white, ugly paddle feet out there with
this beautiful mountain engine soft light and just photographed my
feet for about thirty minutes. And it was horrible. It
was horrible, awful, you know, like they were crackling. There's
(50:11):
so many laid on top of your crackling. But tell
your wife. On my left foot was a bare spot
of white flesh, but it didn't have a blood flow,
and the mosquito, since that didn't have any blood flow,
so none. I was waiting for mosquito to land in
that spot to kind of complete the composition. But after
about thirty minutes, I was like being driven insane. It
(50:32):
was just horrible, and I I got up. I bracketed
it was slide film, so I bracketed my exposures enough
to know I had it. And then I got in
the truck and drove back. And it was a three
and a half hour drive back to dead Horse, where
I'd rented a mining company pickup truck. I took off
my shoes and socks, I scratched my feet and I've
(50:54):
never felt anything that good in my life. I spept
the entire way back and felt so good. I forgot
to wallow. I was ruling on myself, scratching my feet,
alternating which foot i'd scratch. I just want to keep
one foot on the guess at all times. So tell
your wife. It just turned me into an animal, and
it was. But it's one of the most popular pictures
(51:15):
I ever shot, by.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Far, and I think you can buy a print on
your website.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
I'm sure you can buy a print of anything I shot.
I on the rights to all of it. But the
thing is with that, it's like that illustrates to me
how far you've got to go in terms of discomfort
to make a picture that's surprising. We want people to
be surprised and entertained and you know, move them somehow.
That's what a good journalist does, is get people involved
(51:42):
and take the reader with you into that place, show
them what it's like. And because mosquitoes are such an
important part of the ecosystem up there most of the continents,
ducks and geese and shore birds go up there. Swans too,
they go up there to breed, and there's such a
a rich food chain there. It starts with mosquitos, and
(52:04):
I wanted to illustrate the mosquitoes there, but I couldn't
really figure out a way to do it in a
way that would attract people or they'd notice because they're
so small. They're usually small, and they're up against the sky,
and how do you show that? But yeah, I figured
that would work excellent.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well, Joel, I really appreciate you coming on the show
and chatting with me again. It's honored to talk with you.
A huge fan of your work. The book again, I'm
going to hold it up here for folks. This is
the photo Arc Animals of Earth. Tremendous book. Recommend everybody
pick up a copy and if you see the copy
out in the world, pick it up and start looking through.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It and go to joelsartry dot com if you want
to signed copy. Excellent profits we get go right back
into the photo arcs. So you're helping build the arc too.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
Thank you very much, such a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Thank you all right, Thanks again to Joey for taking
time out of his day to chat with me. Thanks
to my wife Bonnie for helping me out with the
questions on this one. Like I say, she's a photographer.
She's been a big fan of Joel's work for years
and years. I think I first learned about Joel's work
(53:15):
through my wife, so she was excited that I was
going to get to chat with him, and we were
working together on these questions. So definitely I have to
get her props here, and I know that she's listening
as well. So thanks, sweetie, I appreciate it, and of
course thanks to JJ Posway, the excellent JJ Posway who
edits our show and stitched all of this together. Let's see.
(53:37):
On top of that, I'll just remind everyone out there
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast. We have our core episodes. That's our
core science and culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We
do a little short form action on Wednesdays, and then
on Fridays we set all that aside. We just do
a weird movie for Weird House Cinema, So go ahead
and check that out. You'll find this wherever you get
(53:59):
your audio podcast, and if you want the video version,
head on over to Netflix. And wherever you get the show,
we just asked you rate, review, subscribe if you're on Netflix,
give us a couple of thumbs up, and ask to
be reminded about new episodes and if you would like
to reach out to us, ask us questions, requests, topics
for the future, you can email us at contact at
(54:19):
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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