“Most humans will sit for their pictures to be taken, so that’s not a problem. If you understand what drives people, what they’re motivated by, that’s fine. But with animals, it’s different. It’s hard to speak their language a lot of the time.”
Joel Sartore, National Geographic Fellow and long-time contributing photographer for National Geographic’s family of magazines and websites, opened his TEDx DeExtinction talk by explaining that, for more than 20 years, he had travelled the world, taking pictures of various conservation issues.
And then, one day, he realized he needed to do more.
“I realized that what I’m doing here in the wild,” he said, pointing to a giant screen image of a sea turtle finding its way back to sea on a lonely tropical beach, “is just not enough. Through my career I have seen more and more species head towards extinction. So now I’m in the second act of my career. I’m 50-years-old. Maybe I have 20 years left. Maybe. If I’m lucky. What am I going to do to save species?
“I went from doing this—” he said, pointing at the image of the turtle on the beach, “to taking black and white backgrounds with me and doing this—“ he said, pointing at a new image of a turtle swimming, just the turtle, in silhouette, with a clear white backdrop in the background.
The difference to the naked eye is simple: One is an action photo, taken in the wild; the other is a more traditional portrait photo, a close-up of a single animal, with nothing else to distract the eye.
So what, you might ask.
Simple, Sartore would say. One is an action shot, taken in the wild, a single moment not unlike countless other single moments, all vying for attention. Seen today, forgotten tomorrow. The other, he explains, is immortal. A portrait photo, well taken, is forever.
“I started doing this more and more. Everywhere I can go, everywhere National Geographic sends me, every continent, every state, all the time.
“I started eight years ago. I called it The Photo Ark. The goal is to get animals on black-and-white backgrounds, and get people to care. That’s it. Look them in the eye. See how amazing amphibians are? Reptiles? Whatever I have to do to get people to care.
“What’s it going to take? I don’t know. So far it hasn’t worked out too well for me. I’m seeing almost 50 percent of all amphibians either at extinction now or at risk of extinction. Down to eight, seven, five or four, a couple. Now you’re looking at the very last one. We’re talking about extinction today. I see species right before they go extinct.
“That’s where I come in. . . . I really need to tell the world about this.”
This coming weekend, National Geographic’s specialty channel NatGeo Wild premieres a two-part, two-week special, Photo Ark, which accompanies Sartore on his 25-year mission to take portrait photos of some 15,000 species.
Now age 57, by his reckoning he is two-thirds of the way there: 10,531 species to be exact. This past May he recorded his 10,000th species: a güiña, the smallest wildcat in the Americas, which he photographed at Fauna Andina, a wildlife reserve in Chile. The photo was a milestone nearly 15 years in the making.
“What do I have to do? I think about this question all the time — what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?
“Every class of animal is now at risk. We’re at risk of losing half of all species by the turn of the next century. We know it’s bad. What to do. My goal is to get people engaged. Get the public engaged. That’s the thing. How do we do this? We have to make it interesting. We have to get people off the couch.
©Joel Sartore NationalGeographic Photo Ark
“We have to get them to care about more than the price at the pump and what’s on television. We have to engage them and get them to meet these animals face-to-face. Most people live in cities now. They live out in the country. They’re never going to get the chance to see these things, unless they get involved somehow and look these animals right in the eye.
“How do we get there? I don’t know. Tick, tick, tick. Time’s running out, isn’t it?
“Can we do it? Absolutely we can. So far, most of what you’ve seen here tonight did not have to go away. It’s dying off for lack of attention. We just need to get this on the public’s radar screen. Have we done it before? You bet we have. We’ve done it many times. We’ve saved the giant panda so far. . . . We can do this. Absolutely. There’s no time to lose, though, is there. No time.
“I often get discouraged if I’m out in the field and I’m seeing the last of something and I think, ‘Holy cow, what am I going to do? How do I get people to care? Is it worth it?’ Absolutely.
“Margaret Mead once said so famously, ‘Never doubt that a small group of concerned can change the world.’”
There’s more, of course. Sartore’s world view — and it is truly a world view — is that this is a great time to be in conservation; there are a million things people can do. The elephant in the room is all of us.
“I have three children . . . This is not happening to our grandchildren; it’s happening now.
“I'm just inspired to do all I can with the time I have on Earth, and I don't let it get me down. I just think, ‘Well, this one may go extinct, but we're going to tell its story everywhere we can.
“And try to encourage others to realize that these all have value, and that it's a tragedy to let anything else like this happen. Not to mention, it could really hurt humanity in the long run. We shouldn't be throwing away the other pieces of the puzzle before we know what they do.”
He knows the power of a good quip.
“How did I start out? Well, for me, I went to the University of Nebraska, where the ’n’ stands for . . . knowledge. That’s right.
“And I took pictures of things that I thought were interesting or different. Like a cowboy roping a cat. . . . I looked for the weird stuff.”
There is still time to turn things around or else he wouldn’t be putting so much time and effort into the Photo Ark.
The truth is that is to get a message across in a single photo is hard to do, he admits, but a single portrait photo, when it works, can work wonders.
“When people connect to animals through eye contact, we’ve got a real chance at changing human behaviour. That’s what we’re all about.
“Maybe that’s what an explorer does. We go out and find things that people don’t know about, and we bring it back.”
He knows the power of a good opening line.
“My name is Joel Sartore,” he said in a promotional video for the 2018 National Geographic Explorer of the Year Award — a line he often uses now to open his speaking engagements. “I’m a photographer, and my mission is pretty simple: To save life on Earth as we know it.”
Photo Ark debuts Saturday on NatGeo Wild at 10E/9C.