Photograph by Cynthia
After watching the CNBC’s documentary video, “National Geographic Photographers,” you may wonder this question: Is it really worth almost killing yourself to take a single photograph?
Here is National Geographic wildlife photographer Nick Nichols standing in the middle of an African rainforest. His hands are covered by hundreds of crawling and flying bugs that keep invading into his eyes, ears and mouth despite his constant attempt to swipe them away. Bigger worms have dug into his feet – dug, literally – and a local guide has to help him dig those out again with a big needle. His legs are horrifying, too: There isn’t a single clean area left that hasn’t been bitten by various kinds of insects.
“Most of the time my job is not to take photos but to survive in the environment where I got my photos,” said Nichols.
Almost every National Geographic photographer is a one-man-band who is thrown into a strange world to figure out where to go, what to photograph and who to talk to by him or herself. Disease, danger, loneliness, fatigue, worries and frustrating pre-arrangement work are the photographers’ closest but haunting friends.
“Maybe the troubles are more glamorous,” photographer Jodi Cobb said and laughed, noting that her job is not really as romantic and cool as you might have imagined.
But what’s the point of putting oneself in such an awkward situation? You ask.
A number of National Geographic photographers would probably give you the same answer: “To capture the moment you might never see again in your life.”
William Allard pressed his shutter before his plane crashed onto the ground; Cobb stood on a moving train pulling half of her body outside the carriage; and Nichols took one last possible shot when his subject – a wild, angry and roaring elephant – started running toward him.
These are the moments that manifest National Geographic’s one-century-old, founding philosophy: The mind must see.
But seeing clearly and sharply human being’s personalities, lives, emotions, histories and conditions is not the whole goal Allard’s photos try to achieve - a group of south Asian girls dancing in a nightclub, a nude stripper shaking her body on a stage, and a prom-dressed blonde coming out of her luxury car - Allard wants his photos to move, smell and sound.
If these collages of human beings can present the mind with the opportunities to see what the self is like, then animals can probably tell the mind how to think the self.
Nichol’s wildlife photos completely abandon the previous static fashion. He incorporates the 60’s rock style so that his animals are singing, dancing, fighting and struggling, too – just like human beings.
“The static photos just don’t do the job, because the world is moving,” said Nichols.
Here is National Geographic wildlife photographer Nick Nichols standing in the middle of an African rainforest. His hands are covered by hundreds of crawling and flying bugs that keep invading into his eyes, ears and mouth despite his constant attempt to swipe them away. Bigger worms have dug into his feet – dug, literally – and a local guide has to help him dig those out again with a big needle. His legs are horrifying, too: There isn’t a single clean area left that hasn’t been bitten by various kinds of insects.
“Most of the time my job is not to take photos but to survive in the environment where I got my photos,” said Nichols.
Almost every National Geographic photographer is a one-man-band who is thrown into a strange world to figure out where to go, what to photograph and who to talk to by him or herself. Disease, danger, loneliness, fatigue, worries and frustrating pre-arrangement work are the photographers’ closest but haunting friends.
“Maybe the troubles are more glamorous,” photographer Jodi Cobb said and laughed, noting that her job is not really as romantic and cool as you might have imagined.
But what’s the point of putting oneself in such an awkward situation? You ask.
A number of National Geographic photographers would probably give you the same answer: “To capture the moment you might never see again in your life.”
William Allard pressed his shutter before his plane crashed onto the ground; Cobb stood on a moving train pulling half of her body outside the carriage; and Nichols took one last possible shot when his subject – a wild, angry and roaring elephant – started running toward him.
These are the moments that manifest National Geographic’s one-century-old, founding philosophy: The mind must see.
But seeing clearly and sharply human being’s personalities, lives, emotions, histories and conditions is not the whole goal Allard’s photos try to achieve - a group of south Asian girls dancing in a nightclub, a nude stripper shaking her body on a stage, and a prom-dressed blonde coming out of her luxury car - Allard wants his photos to move, smell and sound.
If these collages of human beings can present the mind with the opportunities to see what the self is like, then animals can probably tell the mind how to think the self.
Nichol’s wildlife photos completely abandon the previous static fashion. He incorporates the 60’s rock style so that his animals are singing, dancing, fighting and struggling, too – just like human beings.
“The static photos just don’t do the job, because the world is moving,” said Nichols.
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