The Virginian-Pilot
© December 8, 2014
VIRGINIA BEACH
Aire the red-tailed hawk wasn’t cooperating.
She kept turning sideways Sunday morning, showing the camera where her right wing was amputated after a collision with a cellphone tower. Why wouldn’t she show her good side?
“I don’t speak red-tailed hawk well, so who knows?” said photographer Joel Sartore. After some coaxing, he got the shot.
He always does.
Sartore, 52, a National Geographic photographer from Nebraska, has spent the past nine years photographing captive species around the world for a project he calls the Photo Ark. The collection is part preservation, part inspiration: If people see beautiful, up-close photographs of animals, Sartore reasons, they might fall in love. And if they do, they might try to keep them from extinction.
On Sunday, he was at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, where he spoke to the public. While there, he asked if he could add a few of the aquarium’s animals to the ark, said Rachel Metz, director of live exhibits. On Sunday, he photographed mostly birds; today, he’ll tackle the fish.
“It’s exciting. He’s been all over the world photographing animals, and now here he is,” Metz said, “photographing ours.”
Handlers buzzed Sunday morning as Sartore set up a “light tent,” a cloth box that contains the creatures. He said bees are tough and wasps aren’t any fun, but birds are a close runner-up on his list of the toughest critters to photograph.
Gulliver the herring gull put up a fight. He became a local celebrity after dangling – and being rescued – from power lines near the Lesner Bridge. On Sunday, he scratched and stomped around the light tent.
“Ow, that’s my fingers,” his handler said as he took Gulliver away after the shoot. “That’s my wrist.”
A pretty red-headed moorhen behaved better, but Sonic the North African hedgehog ran in circles. A sand boa from Kenya just sat still, and a tiny yellow warbler, native to Virginia and missing one eye, preened for the camera.
“It’s easy when they just stand there, with their good eye toward you,” Sartore said.
His pictures show animals in startling detail against plain black or white backgrounds. That way, he says, an elephant appears the same size and has as much value as a sparrow.
Sartore said he has photographed about 4,250 species in more than 200 zoos and aquariums around the world. That puts him about a third of the way toward his goal of photographing all 12,000 species in captivity.
It’s a small percentage of the world’s total biodiversity – there are 6,000 species of frogs alone, he said – but there are advantages to sticking with captive animals. For one thing, they don’t have to be chased down in the wild. For another, Sartore can send a message that zoos and aquariums are doing important work – often they’re the only places some people will interact with animals.
“You can’t care about something if you’ve never met it,” he said.
In his presentation, Sartore urged people to think about what they buy and throw away.
Want to save a walrus? Put on a sweater, he said.
“Don’t burn carbon to keep your house warm,” he said. “You don’t have to be a biologist to save species.”
Elisabeth Hulette, 757-222-5097, elisabeth.hulette@pilotonline.com
Photographer focuses on beasts" beauty in Va. Beach
No comments:
Post a Comment