FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Moose Peterson
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Moose Peterson, a longtime photographer and educator whose work focuses on wildlife, wild places, and aviation, with a clear passion for visual storytelling and preserving both natural and aviation heritage.
You can visit Moose's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
I don't compose photographs. Because in that world of advertising and stuff, rules of composition are really important to move the person's eye around that page in the magazine or that screen of the TV or computer. And so you for everything from color and light and fonts. And so you have that luxury of placing every one of those elements exactly where you know you can make, and that's psychology, which is where my mom was. You can truly manipulate the viewer to get from point A to point B on your time, on your message. I don't have that luxury as a photographer. Not with any of my subjects. They're moving, they're fluid. I can't tell a plane, hold it right there, perfect background, because they crash. Okay. It don't work so well. So I I don't think of and I don't use and I don't teach composition. I talk about arranging elements, which is the the heart of advertising and manipulating the mind to tell a story, is you arrange elements to move the viewer's eye through that photograph to the conclusion you want them to have. So it's total manipulation without using Photoshop to manipulate it. So, and that is essential to the way that I have been working since day one with a camera is arranging elements, not composition.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, a quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_01Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and my God, folks, I love this job. Today we get to talk about two of the things that are really close and dear to my own heart. Um, not only photography, but wildlife photography, landscape photography, and something that seems a little bit contradictory to that, but trust me, is not at all aviation photography. In other words, we're talking with Moose Peterson, and there is nobody out there who is more present or more loved in this community than Moose. I mean, the man's a Nikon ambassador. He's got the John Muir Conservation Award, research associate with the Endangered Species Recovery Program. He's a Lexar Elite photographer, creative producer, and photographer for his film Warbirds and the Men Who Flew Them. The man's been in more than a hundred, and think about this: more than 143 magazines. He doesn't have one or two books. He's got 29, the last time I got a good count. And if you go and you look them up online, you start seeing a wonderful educational series. The man is a brilliant teacher, but not only the kind of packaged teaching, um, but he's got these things out there called shooting reports, which is just, hey kids, this is what it's like outside today, which I find not only instructive, but inspiring. And there's a reason for his popularity and his success because you look at the images and you think, okay, there it is. There's the magic, there's the presence. Because we've all taken a picture of a pretty cloud or a deer in the backyard or whatever, and they are snapshots. There's a way to get at this, there's there's an intent behind his work, which really, I think, instructs and informs the whole life that he's been putting together behind or you know, because of his work. You look at his mission statement on some websites along with his wife, he says the goal of our work is to preserve our wild heritage. Now, just think about that. If your goal is preservation, you approach in in history, you approach photography with a certain mindset. This is what the aesthetics should be when you're being driven by a kind of empathetic and proactive argument. Moose, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Well, Scott, at the moment, I'm a little speechless.
SPEAKER_00That's um a hell of an intro. Thank you, uh, my friend. That um that pretty much encompasses it. We can say goodbye now and we're gonna go.
SPEAKER_01Okay, we're we're not gonna go look up his work, gang. He's good. Um, man, I mean, Moose, uh you know, I I don't know if we've if I told you this before, um, but I am myself a private pilot. So I've been following uh aviation photography for a long, long time. And my own work tends towards landscapes and wildlife and that kind of stuff. So I mean, this work is just stellar, and and I really can't wait to get into the the back of it a little bit. But the case let let's let's let's go back to the beginning. And there's two origin stories. You know, one sort of for the aviation side, one for sort of the the wildlife side. And and on, let's start with with the wildlife side, because you are the only photographer I know who can claim, you know, and and this is not a one-to-one correlation, but can claim that a single picture probably saved an entire bird species from extinction. You tell a story in in another venue, you know, that your mom ran a nursery school, one of the other kids, their parent was a biologist, and through these connections, you get hauled out to go watch a nest of at least Bell's virio, and this winds up being a sea change. So tell me that story. Tell me about the early you and getting involved with birds and then with wildlife.
SPEAKER_00Gee, Scott, you did a hell of a job on homework. You've got me now. I'm kind of nervous. So uh um well, you got it's important to understand a couple things. One, I've been incredibly blessed and fortunate. I would I would love to be able to take credit, but just like you mentioned mom and and Tom and getting me involved with the LBV. Um, and to bring it full circle, um, two weeks ago, this big study came out, and I was part of a uh recovery team and research project for giant kangurat out in the central coast of California back when there was only two of them left. And uh all the work that uh and I was just a very itty-bitty little small cog on that whole research team. Now there's uh there's uh almost a million of them now. They are fully recovered. How to begin? Oh man. You know, I was a basic kid. I got uh recruited by a place called Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. At 18, I went off to uh learn photography and quickly realized that yeah, that wasn't the environment for me to learn. So then I went to work for another wildlife photographer who told me within the first couple of weeks of being his assistant that I should go back to carpentry. I would never make it as a photographer.
SPEAKER_01Um I Well, no, wait, but even before that, though, I mean, you know you get recruited to go to a photography camp or a session, but that means they're interested in photography. You could have been recruited for a soccer team or or a you know a rock and roll band. You know, what was what about the camera was already in your life at that point?
SPEAKER_00Oh, geez. Um my grandfather, um who is an interesting story, because after looking at his, he was it was back at the you know, the turn of the century, 1900s, and he's out there shooting roll or two of film every day. And this is back when you would you'd have a camera with preloaded film and you go out and do it, and and this is back depression, he was shooting like crazy. We've got his photographs of the first aircraft coming into San Diego, for example, and and all this other stuff. And then we see these photographs, and it looks south the border, and it's a table full of looks like drugs. So he was just a shop clerk, and yet he was doing all this photography stuff. So the the rumor we started amongst our family was he must have been a drug dealer to afford photography back then. So, you know, it was I I had uh a father who had an Argus uh C3 who went through World War II in Korea with it and shot, shooting air-to-air out of his out of the nose of the B-29. Um my cousin, he was the first with uh Nikons, and and uh he let me play with his old F atomic, and and it just it was just a way of how the my you know family, they all want to tell stories. We're all storytellers, and my sister did it with pen and paper and and painting, and she was probably the biggest influence, and just we see so much in this world that um I was taught not to take any of it for granted, the bad or the good, and and how do you share it? And I can't draw with a Dickens. Um photography was my only option.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but I mean you get hauled out to watch a nest. They you know, for the age that you were, is there anything more boring than watching a bird nest? So interesting.
SPEAKER_00Um so the work that I did back at Mono Basin behind Santa Barbara, uh, even though my mom volunteered me with air quotes, it was something that I actually um I absolutely loved. It was uh I would go on Friday and and drop off my hot rod Camaro and pick up my four service green pickup truck. And then the next morning in the dark, I'd drive the two-hour dirt road over to where Mono Basin was. And I I've always had uh sixth sense for finding bird nests. It was never, it's never been a challenge watching the clues I could find them. And and at the time, uh the Lisbell's verio originally, well in the 1850s, John Muir talked about, you know, this drab gray little songbird that was all over the Central Valley. But by the time I started working with them, um, they were down to less than 100 in the whole world. So the the I was to find this one little population that another researcher had kind of found years before. I re-found it, started monitoring it, and then in the afternoons, I was had the I was able to photograph them. And the first nest I photographed, and they nest very low because they kind of use the mugwort, which is a ground cover as part of their, they they they kind of make this aerial tunnel about two feet off the ground, then they pop up at their nest because they're an MM species, they're they're meant to be eaten, and this particular nest that I photographed above it, about eight feet above it, was a Cooper hawk nest. Oh, that's convenient. And then about, without looking at my notes, I'm gonna say about a week after they laid the eggs, there was a fire that went through, and the bulldozer cutting a line to stop the fire, came to about six feet of the nest. So at this point, the nest was thought to be one that wouldn't succeed anyway. Right. So photographing it, and you know, when you're working with a species that's listed, and at that point it was only state, it wasn't federal, you have to have permits, you know, harassment, things like that. And um, there was people back then who would check those things, but this particular one was like, yeah, moose can photograph it. And it turned out that this nest, double clutch, which means it raised its first brood successfully, laid a second in that same nest. So I had this opportunity to dial in everything, and they kept coming in with different insects, and those insects were then uh the entomologists, because I'm not a bug person, figured out that the varials were going outside the riparian zone to the chaparral zone, uh, to get these insects to feed the kids. And even though it's all anecdotal, which is important, it's not I'm not a scientist. I yes, I can walk the walk, but I don't have all the papers to do the talk. Right, right. Um, the it's hard to refute photographs, especially when you're shooting film. There was it is what it is. There is all the good and the bad. It is in each click, there's no fixing it later. And because of all that anecdotal evidence, when they went and did the listing package for the LBV, uh my images were in there and they included a lot of outside the riparion zone in the critical habitat. And today um LBV is doing uh swimmingly better than back then. It's not been delisted, but it is um, there's thousands of individuals. And it's damaged. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Didn't somebody come to you though after those pictures were out and and basically, you know, pat you on the head and say, these images did exactly what we were hoping. They convinced the powers or whatever.
SPEAKER_00My very first photo text package that got published was by a magazine called Outdoor California. And my mentor for writing and getting articles packages done, Dave Dick, was editor. And that when that article came out, it was seen by a gentleman down in Oceanside, California who every day would walk with a good friend of his. And they'd seen and heard the Lee Spells very well, because the male has a very distinct sounding uh song when it's when it's uh mating season. And so when they joined up for their walk, he said, Oh, by the way, that bird is blah, blah, blah, and showed him my article. And that gentleman said, Oh, they're down there right now, bulldozing all that where they live. And so they call fish and wildlife. And there's a little loophole, I don't know, but you know, this is this is 40 years ago, but there was a loophole back then that you could destroy habitat within X amount of time, assigning of a listing, and you can say, oops, and not get in trouble. But these gentlemen call fish and wildlife, and then uh Carla from Fish and Wildlife called me up and said, I probably save, because diversity is very important, probably save the these spells very old extinction.
SPEAKER_01We hope that our images have some effect. And and you know, we we we know in our hearts and our heads that, you know, we can change somebody else's sense of empathy. But I mean, here is physical tangible proof um that a photo package can actually change the world.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, that's why I'm so vigilant to get people to share. Yeah. Share their images. Um, they're not supposed to be a coin collection in some drawer never seen again. You know, it's we go out there and people are scared to share because somebody might say something and hurts your feeling. Well, that's just part of it. Get over it. Because you never know that one person who might see that photograph, and it could it could change their world, if not our world.
SPEAKER_01So, in the time between that and and 81, when you start your business, you know, you you're working in a camera store, there's some early fashion work I heard out there. Yeah, a long time ago. So, so so you know, tell me about coming into self-awareness as a photographer before, you know, between you know the bird days and 81.
SPEAKER_00Well, self-awareness was never my issue. Keeping quiet about it probably was. Um Yeah, I've said things that have gotten me in trouble, regrettably. My apologies to all. Um so it's it's so photography, if you're gonna make it a business um and have a family, which were family was was number one, the business of number two, you you juggle. And it's it's it's part of a a process that I don't even know is viable or even thinkable these days. Because I had avenues of still have avenues with editorial work, which is my main thing of how I tell stories in the basic businesses, if at least back in the day, you would shoot a photograph, and then hopefully somebody has written an article that you have made a hole that needs your photograph to illustrate their article. And and uh Dave Dick quickly said, Well, you know, if you wrote the article and the article and he and you create your own hole verbally and you fill a photograph, then guess what? And this is the part that always cracks uh me up and my wife up, Sharon, because when we started out, magazines didn't want a text photo package from one photographer. They didn't want it. So we in for the longest time, the article we wrote was written by Sharon Peterson and the photographs by Moose Peterson, even though both were written and done by Moose Peterson. To the point when my first book came out in '91, the author, the um publisher almost made us, you know, get a notarized note that it was true. I wrote the articles, not Sharon, because he wanted me to write the book because of my knowledge. So it's all that I don't know was around anymore because writing a text photo package is commonplace now for the photographer if they're smart for business. And that was the whole thing. And uh until the boys, uh at least junior high, you know, the office would shut down at three in the afternoon when they came home from school and was shut down until they went to bed at eight or nine, and then we went back to work. And that was that was our life. And we there was, you know, we started out. Paydays are far and few in between. There, it's hard for people to understand. There is no, you know, every Friday isn't a paycheck, no matter how hard you work in your photography business. And there was a long time when there was hundreds of rolls in that freezer uh waiting for funds to come in to get a process, then to continue the the whole thing. And it's I wouldn't, I wouldn't change a thing. Um it's just, you know, I'm sounding old now. I should get my wheelchair out or my walker or something. Uh you know, it's as I tell people I have more faults than California. And I I could have really, you know, wish some of my wisdom that that comes with you know sticking it out and making it had been around back then. Uh and that's just the process.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah. I mean, you you've got a lot of cool stories out there, you know, about the process. One of them, I forget what venue or what interview it was. Um, you were talking about, you know, if your phone bill was less expensive one month than it was the month before, that meant you weren't working hard enough. Um, that you needed to get out there and make more calls. But which still holds true today. Okay. Well, okay. That hasn't changed. There is this thing called an unlimited calling plan, Moose. Same bill every month.
SPEAKER_00The moral of that story is, though, that people put their their stuff out there on whatever venue you want, thinking that some editor is going to see it and call you up for that photograph, as if they have that luxury of time to go out and do that. And yes, it does happen occasionally, but it's not one that you could build a business plan around. So the continual reaching out to clients, new and old, uh, is something that we still do. And that's why we have so many established clients from that have been clients for 30 years or more.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I do know the story about the Nikon guy coming into the camera store. Um, but I mean, so tell me that story, but tell me how you knew at the beginning that I mean, you may have enjoyed it, you may have had a good time, but you knew the work had in in and of itself any promise or any potential.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's just comes back to being so fortunate and blessed. So, yeah, when Maurice, who was the Nikon rep at the store I was manager for, came in, he encouraged me, um, because I would have I had some of my work on the wall in the office. Now, people only understand that my love affair with Nikon goes back to when I was nine or ten years old. Uh yeah, it's not something that's new, not something that's been paid for. You know, when I had that F atomic my cousins in my hand, I could pop prisons and screens out and slide the back off and all that stuff. And being a mechanic, which my dad instilled in me, I was fascinated. I mean, I'm probably one of the few people on the planet that their dad got him a broken camera for Christmas because they knew he knew I'd love taking it apart and I couldn't do any wrong to it. So working in a camera store where I could play with all those things, and that's literally the word, play with it, I started figuring out how I could use the camera as a tool to solve my photographic problems. It was kind of just the natural progression. I was at Brooks at the time. And then when I left Brooks, I was at the store for a few years, and I had then the regional manager for um Nikon back west, uh Victor. Uh he really then kind of, for lack of better terms, took me under his wing. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I shot with Nikon. It's just that uh he recognized the good in me and tried to help me with the bad, and uh saw that there when it comes to critters, I was pretty good at it. You know, I was getting photographs in this is film. Um that somebody at 18 years old shouldn't be getting. And they just kept encouraging me. And um and their biggest encouragement wasn't anything other than share your images, get them out there. So then I started dealing with editors, and that whole scenario kind of changed because the editors I were was working with back then were some of the biggest names in the publishing world who were sending me rejection notices. And me being me, I would call them up and say, Why did what what what was missing in my photograph that you rejected it? I wanted to learn from them. And so that kind of got around that Moose would call when he got rejected, not to be upset, but to actually learn from the negative, the failure. And and I was a very I'm still to this day have editors who will say, well, you know, this photograph would have been stronger if blah, blah, blah. Or we chose this one over that one because and and it's it's a continual learning process. So that's that's just my fits my character.
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, you you've said that the fashion work and you then you included landscape were both totally not for you. And yet you do some landscape photography. Is there something about the drama of the animals that is, you know, more central for your work? Or what is it you know about landscape early on that wasn't calling you, but the wildlife was?
SPEAKER_00Well, now we have to go back to something that's really not truly relevant anymore. But when I started out, you had things like Arizona Magazine thing, and most of the images in there were were shot with four by five cameras. And it's hard to understand the relevance between a 35mm and a four by five and the process going into it. But in the 80s and 90s, competing with folks on that level wasn't within my time or my camera budget. So I doing landscape, and this sounds so bad, but I don't know another way to put it. It's so easy for me. It's really it's a no-brainer. I up until I was until started dating Sharon, my father and I would do up to 500 miles a year in the backcountry, you know, walking with a backpack. And when you're continually seeing that and exposed to that, it just gets ingrained. And you see the drama, at least for me, it was like putting in the in a viewfinder and sharing it. Doesn't take a lot. Where wildlife photography, um, the best way I can explain it is going back to fly fishing, which I've been doing forever. And I fly and I tie. And when so when you you tie a fly, you're you're first trying to make a little piece of wire and thread and feather look like an actual critter, an insect, to the point that when you present it correctly to the trout, it goes, oh, yum yum, and then you set the hook and you bring it in. And it's it's a process, you know, of fooling something and then having the fact that you can, for I don't know, maybe for a minute, you've got that trout in your hand while you get a picture and then you release it. It's kind of the same idea with critters. And that's why I I've always said in forever, you know, no photographers were sacrificing the welfare of the subject. I use barbless hooks. So the fish, even though fish and game has shown that a fish will get a trout will get caught an individual to nine times a day. When I'm working with critters that are threatened and dangered, and you've got only a few individuals left, you've got to have all your ducks in a row. You've got to be as a photographer, just like that fly. You've got to be there enough to so the fish says it's okay, or the critter says it's okay. And then when you're done, you slip away and and the trout goes back to life in the cr in the stream or that critter just goes on with its survival.
SPEAKER_01And I mean, fly fishing, it's not only you know, tie a fly that is mimicking a you know a you know a fly in some way, but it has to be precise for that season and down to that day or that afternoon. Um, you do a lot of research before you decide what fly to tie on the end of your leader. So I would imagine that your work as a wildlife photographer involves countless hours of research about the animals you are photographing.
SPEAKER_00It does. Um very, very well wrapped up. The uh I have literally we have a room that we call library because it's nothing but full of books that I have read from management plans and biology, and it's probably obscene how much biology is actually between my crani ears, my cranium, but you know, um I've got a a I'm not gonna take five minutes to find the book, believe me. Okay. A biologist I work with, I worked with the 80s and 90s a little bit in the 2000. Um, Vern's just this marvelous guy. And we did, and he got me just to the point where I can't live without seeing bighorn sheep, which is cool. They're just down the street for me. But um, we did a lot of projects, which includes a reintroduction uh into an area. And he was an author, plus a number of other folks in a book just came out, Mountain Sheep in North America, Biology, Ecology, Conservation, and Management. I'm in that book as a contributor. So this is a book, it's not a coffee table book, okay? It's not a book that you're gonna find at Barnes and Noble. This is for biologists and ecologists and managers of habitat. And I take more pride in the fact that I'm included in that book in my photographs and and observations than than a lot of things I get published. And that is from all that I just call it trivia or basic biology that I cram in my head. So, you know, when you when you see a critter, they're gonna do something. And as a photographer, if you want to get that moment, and it kind of comes, it's a lot involved there, but that moment, you know, of their the critter's life that Jay Mazell would call gesture, to do that, you kind of have to, for all at least for me, be somewhat prepared, right length of lens, the right placement of your body and camera, everything exposure to so when you go click, all that comes together that could be then shared and then reach out and grab people's heartstrings. So, yeah, research is a big part of that.
SPEAKER_01And it's not only the biology, it's the aesthetics and the photography as well. Um, I mean, I'm looking at a picture you posted just a couple of days ago about a Rosiet Spoonbill. Um, I mean, gorgeous, gorgeous picture. But start to unpack that in terms of composition, in terms of light, in terms of exposure. I mean, it's a masterclass, you know, just a you know a simple picture of a bird with its wings out. Uh-uh, it's not a simple picture of a bird with its wings out.
SPEAKER_00So can I you brought up one word that I want to help unpack for people? Okay. I don't compose photographs. I don't use I don't use now my sister, who was a commercial artist, died at 41 from skin cancer. The one of the things that she impressed upon me, because in that world of of advertising and stuff, rules of composition are really important to move the person's eye around that page in the magazine or that screen of the TV or computer. And so you everything from color and light and fonts, and so you have that luxury of placing every one of those elements exactly where you know you can make, and that's psychology, which is where my mom was. You can truly manipulate the viewer to get from point A to point B on your time, on your message. I don't have that luxury as a photographer, not with any of my subjects. They're moving, they're fluid. I can't tell a plane, hold her right there, perfect background, because they crash. Okay. It don't work so well. So I don't think of and I don't use and I don't teach composition. I talk about arranging elements, which is the the heart of advertising and manipulating the mind to tell a story, is you arrange elements to move the viewer's eye through that photograph to the conclusion you want them to have. So it's total manipulation without using Photoshop to manipulate it. So, and that is essential to the way that I have been working since day one with a camera is arranging elements, not composition.
SPEAKER_02Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you're enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames Quarterly Printed Photography Magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_01You know, one of the truths about wildlife photography is there's a lot of patience involved, um, and then a lot of being able to react very quickly uh as well. Um you were telling a story to Larry Becker about uh photographing bears, but then there was also a mountain, and then I think this was the same story where the tide was coming in. Tell me a story just about being out in the field where everything is is all up in the air at the same time.
SPEAKER_00So I am a fourth-generation Californian, even though we moved to Montana and we live there. And one of the, and trying to understand the entire picture of California, one major piece that puzzle was missing was grizzly bears, which were extinct in the state in 1924. So to find that and understand that, because you know, California once had a subspecies that did nothing but roam the beaches looking for whale carcasses, and another subspecies that would roam the Central Valley just looking for oaks. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. It it was the diversity that blows my mind. Anyway, nothing like that exists uh really uh anywhere now. So I went to first Yellowstone, which was really not conducive to someone who wants to just spend time and watch without having any outside influences. So then I went to Alaska, and I'm glad people go out and spend time with bears, but they they do it for the sake of the photograph, not for the bears. So I was on a hiatus for quite a while with bears, and finally an old friend who runs a bear camp, and what they do is they hunt bears, as in trophy hunting. Sam's a great guy, and he's up on Kodiak Island. And so for the last decade almost, been going there and and comes back to a lot of things you asked about, patience and what have you. We we stay at this cabin, at these cabins, no electricity, no running water, nothing like that. It's it's you're roughing it, which does it worked fine for me. And we go up on flat bottom boats up to the flats, the flats are tidal flats. A grass that within a month is so tall from when it first sprouts, you can't see uh uh one of these Kodiak brown bears in it. You know, they if they're on there, all fours are about five, five, I five and a half feet tall. The grass is so tall you can't see them. It's not safe to be there. So we go there with this about 10-day window that we hope that the weather and the everything, the stars align that you can actually make images that are compelling. So you and this the tides there are the second biggest set of tides in the world, and they'll drop 20 to 22 feet at the height of the tide cycle. But you go up and you you you park and you don't ever know what's gonna happen. You can literally sit there for 10 hours and do nothing but you know, whistle to yourself, and then you can go the next day and you don't have time to whistle in 10 hours. You don't know. And and bears will do one or two things, they see you. And you gotta understand, I don't have bear spray, I don't have guns, I don't have any of that stuff. I just have the biological information and knowledge I've learned from from reading and from spending time with critters in the field. And bears do one or two things. They're either gonna see you and run away, or they're not gonna care. And so when I have cubs underneath my tripod gnawing on the carbon fiber because they get a little static charge in the gums and they kind of like that. Yeah. And mom is, you know, 15 feet away. I don't freak out, but I do softly tell the cubs, you know, it's only happened once. I said, you know, go back to mom because they make the wrong noise. Mom's gonna run me over, and then later go, I wonder if, you know, he really was a threat or not. They don't act, they don't work that way. So up there at Kodiak, you're on the flats and he's kind of like uh a paratrooper. You're surrounded by the bears, and there ain't nowhere you can escape. You know, this is a bear that can do 35, 40 miles an hour in this mud and you're stuck. I mean, so you go there kind of figuring that you're just gonna have a great time, and that's what we do. And and the bears, it's anecdotal, but I'm a firm believer that when a critter has a positive experience with you, the next time they see you, they know you. That your scent is is you. It's like a fingerprint. And so they just do their thing, which is why we had the opportunity to spend four years with one mom and her three cubs from when they first came out um as coi until when mom said, Hey, it's time to go out on your own. And she had them next to us. We it it's it's a life-altering experience when you have this bear that is a thousand pounds and stands, if it stands on its hind legs, is about 10 foot six, ten foot seven. And it's it's just walking around you like you're just another stump or blade of grass. It doesn't care. And it's the greatest compliment you'll ever know.
SPEAKER_01I mean, moose, you know, the the photography world is got a half dozen or so photographers that have been killed by bears as well. Have you ever felt that that you were uh at more risk than you wanted to be?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Just so we know, there's also more photographers been killed doing air-to-airs than than anything else. And no, I've never been, I've never been bluff charged, I've never had any not the hair on the back of my neck, nothing's gone up. The bears have never been anything but the best of uh hosts, and I be I I'm the best guest that I can be in their home.
SPEAKER_01How do you how do you know when your own wildlife pictures are good? What about them satisfies, not the editor, not the audience, satisfies you?
SPEAKER_00I think it comes back from working with all those editors in those magazines, and they're they're explaining sometimes emphatically, sometimes with exasperation, always with the greatest amount of love, what makes an image work. And it's a process that we all have to go through. There's no shortcuts. And you and you learn from a school of hard knocks from failure that this works and this doesn't work, and this works better. And that's you know, great or sucks, don't really come into it. It's just better or stronger or weaker or worse. Um, because I have yet to come close to a photograph that I ever say was great. I have some that are really strong, some that are really yeah, no, it's not I'm just you know, I it people understand I'm just a simple mountain boy. I'm a photographer that shares his passion, and that's it. I'm not an expert. I'm not, I'm not um uh I don't know it all by any stretch of the imagination. I just I just share what I love. And it's just I'm fortunate that for most people, what I love works for them.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so let's switch gears now and go to the other half and bring them together in a minute. And then this is the aviation side. You know, your dad flew in B-29s, you went to a lot of air shows as a kid. Great story about going to LAX just to watch planes come in and out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But then come then come the Reno air races and the D3.
SPEAKER_00Boy, you want to be my biographer? Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is all stuff you've said before, man. It's out there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's scary. No, the um aviation. So I'm a super history buff. Right. To the point where in California, at least when our kids were going through school, they didn't teach history. And that was not acceptable. So the boys had to go through dad's history class all the time. And aviation, it combines so much that I love. Everything from wildlife photography to landscape photography and history to passions that were instilled in me long before I knew they were, it just got wrapped up. And when I had the opportunity to kind of express them at the Reno Air Races, and again, I had uh some great mentors uh from Richard behind the camera to Bob in the cockpit. Uh it it just it just gelled. It wasn't like you don't have to get hit in the head, at least I don't, too many times to realize, hey, that's this is it. And it that's it was kind of that simple sort of. So and I just love it. The history is uh uh fascinating. The the art of flying is which is so complicated, but when you get a gifted person at the stick, it's effortless. And then when you combine that with the beautiful background and light on the on the aircraft, it just makes a photograph that I love people who come up and go, you know, I don't really like aviation or airplanes or any of that stuff, but boy, I sure like your pictures. It's like, hey, I just I just grabbed the bath ring, you know.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, airplanes, just in terms of of geometry and shape, are beautiful. Every single one of them. Uh you know, even the clunky ones, that they're still uh absolutely phenomenally interesting and engaging to look at. But there's still this story about about a pilot at the Reno Air Races buying your prints.
SPEAKER_00Oh, well, yeah, you know, bless pilots' hearts. They um so for anybody who's listening out there who wants to get involved and wants the number one tip share your prints, man. It's that simple. I I'm very fortunate to be um part of the Epsom program, and they they're very they're very good to me. So I I I return it and play it forward. And when I and it's it's self-serving as well as you know, a thank you, but pilots who fly for me, they're gonna get prints that they'll get from nobody else of their images of their planes, and they'll get them within days of the shoot. And if you talk to a pilot, they all will bemoan the fact that they they spend the money in the gas, which of course is what most is obvious to people. But people don't realize engine run times, you have 100 hours and 500 hours, all of a sudden making that plane fly costs tens of thousands of dollars as you tear into that engine or the airframe or whatever. And to to to give a pilot four or five 24 by 30 prints as a thank you is like a drop in the bucket. And then most photographers don't realize that pilots have this thing for their plane. I mean, it's not just something that goes up and down, it's a it's a love affair, you know. That's why they're not. Yeah, they have little man caves in their hangar, and they, you know, they love that plane. And when they go home, that plane's not with them. But if your prints on their wall, their plane is with them, and they'll never forget you for that. Pilots, they love to buy prints. Um, after I give them to them, then they take those prints. And and when I uh the very first air to air, which is probably what you're re referencing um with Ted, I was doing it for a thank you. Um Actually, it was technically my second aired air. First aired air was just very special. And uh Dennis is still a dear friend, uh dear friend after all these decades. And anyway, he had me, one of his sponsors, because he raced at Reno, uh Ted, had a Mustang and had no photographs of it. So we did this quick shoot up over Lake Tahoe. And Dennis knew I would give Ted some prints. And I gave him some prints, and and it had to be more, or I mean, not less than 10 minutes after we got notification from FedEx that they had been delivered. Ted called up and said, I want to order prints. And I'm like, Well, did you get the ones I sent? Yeah, that's why I want to order them. And and um he and it's it was the biggest business revelation because we had just an 18-minute flight. Ted was 81 years old when he flew that Mustang for me. Oh my. He was a really great pilot, but that's really old to deal with the complications of a Mustang, especially with a Sierra front like that. But it was an 18-minute flight, and he bought $5,000 in prints. And so uh I started telling people after that, you know, uh, there's no rock or rabbit on the planet that's gonna pay me $5,000 for 18 minutes of my time.
SPEAKER_01No, not at all. But you know, the the photographs are just stunning, man. I mean, you I look at them and it is a different skill set, though, because uh, you know, when you're doing the open door stuff, when you're doing the air-to-air, you've got choreography going on, uh, which is intricate and dangerous. And that's very different than just something I'm wondering what this bird's gonna do. Tell me just the mechanics of arranging an air-to-air shoot.
SPEAKER_00It's actually the exact same as photographing a recruiter. It starts off with understanding that the history of the aircraft that I'm about to photograph, and then understanding what the client wants, typically the plane owner. So then you get out the sectional maps and the iPad and you start looking at backgrounds and you start thinking about light, you start looking at those variables, and then you have uh and and to be honest with you, just because Moose wants this photograph doesn't mean uh A, it's within the wheelhouse of the pilots, because safety is everything. Uh, that's number one. And then B, the weather gods have to be shining on you because we've had more scrubs than we've had actual flights. So you've got those complications. And once you go up, and um, as I teach in my air-to-air photo clinic, you brief, and we we do three briefs, at least when I do an air-to-air, not just one, but there's three. The first one is talking about the goals and photographs I want to get. Then two is the pilots, because you are flying in formation, they talk pilot talk. Everything from the channels are going to be on when they they taxi, launch once we get in the air, you know, fingers being probably the most common. And then all the what it is to fly safely in formation, the knockoffs like that. And then the third and final brief is bringing together my goals, their stuff. So we're all kind of on the same page. And even though I love pilots and they all will swear that their radios are perfect, there'll be no problems. There's always a radio problem, you know? So you have headsets, and he, but then I have to brief all the hand signals. Um, and some of the hand signals are universal. The one that says smile, the pilots always go, What? Because the pilot of the subject aircraft, they're looking at the wingtip of the plane I'm in. And that's basic formation flying 101. It's called safety. And then and the the pilot of the photo platform, he's flying for two planes, not one. So there's concentration going on. And I try to make it levity as much as possible. So I have a hand signal. So the pilot of the plane I'm photographing knows the smile. So that's that all goes into the process of an air-to-air.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just on the on the tech side, there are you know things that most people know, like shutter speed. If you've got a prop plane, you don't want to have it at four thousandths of a second because you just freeze the prop and you don't, you know, so there's a sweet spot for getting that blur. But you've got some incredible resolution. You you've got some, you know, the the presence of the aircraft in your shots is really remarkable. Is a some of that just you know sharpening and texture in post? Is it nope? No, okay. So it's to tell tell me the the the the gear side of doing air to air.
SPEAKER_00So first, everybody should understand I do not rely on post to save a photograph. If it if I screw it up in the camera, it's deleted. It's it's done. It's that simple for me. Um that comes back from film days. There there was no recovery. You either did or didn't do it. You were a professional or you weren't a professional. It's to me, it's that cut and dry. So the one thing that's kind of it's hard to grasp mentally is that the planes, both the the one that I'm in, the one I'm photographing, you try to match the airspeed. Yeah. And now in that process, you know, I've been in a C-130 and a B-25 and in a cub, they'll all have different airspeeds. So the subject, you're not going to photograph, for example, a P-51 Mustang out of a Cub. Um you've got to match airspeeds. And when you do your orbits or your racetracks, if you've if your photo platform is a little bit slower than the subject aircraft, then you put them on the outside on the curve, so they have to go faster to keep up with you, or vice versa. So that right off the bat, the actual subject, when you match airspeeds, isn't moving because you're going at the same speed. So it's like photographing a rock. Now there is movement up and down with air curves and stuff, but you know, you you we really don't like flying unless it's nice air. It's just way too much. We want to have fun. We don't want it to work. And pilots love it stuff because it is fun. So that's the first thing is that you're not you needing a quote unquote fast shutter speed to stop subject movement. What you have though, going um perpendicular to the film plane is the prop. It's rotating. So when I I have a shutter speed, typically, well, part of it, you learn me to take our our our go to our clinic, is that you've got to be able to say thank you to that subject plane. So you mean you have to have a sharp picture to start with. Right. So when you first launch, you get the subject aircraft parallel to you. So the actual, you don't see the prop rotating, it's perfectly silhouette to you. So then you shoot at a about a 200th of a second, so you get a sharp picture. It's guaranteed. So then you have a photograph to give to that pilot to say thank you. And once you have that, and that's the only time I will chimp in air-to-air, is to make sure I have that first opening shot. Then I start moving that plane around based on the background and the light. And that's when they start going drifting backwards. You can see that prop and get that prop blur. And the propeller only appears when you're you're driving into the sun, which means the pilots are staring at the sun. So you don't do that very long because it's really not comfortable. Okay. So as soon as you start driving into the sun, then the shutter speed I drop it and depends on the aircraft. So a Corsair, you know, the shutter speed is going to be shutter speed would be around 120th of a second, one over 20. Um, if it's something like uh uh a pit or something, then maybe one one twenty-fifth, because those little props are screaming. But the average shutter speed I'm shooting air to air at is a 60th or 80th a second when I'm driving it in the sun. So there's a lot that goes into that process. And if the subject is doing the same airspeed, then sharp images are a no-brainer. And when you think about shutter priority, your shutter speed's gonna be locked into place. So it's gonna do what? It's gonna change your aperture to give you the right exposure. And when you're shooting that slow of a shutter speed, then your aperture is gonna be 22, 32, depending on what the scenario is. So then you it it there's no real heavy lifting into making the shot. It's just understanding how all these basics of mechanics and gravity and physics work, and then it just it just pops right into place, which takes me right back to the days when my dad would give me a broken camera to repair, understanding the mechanics, and then everything just falls into place.
SPEAKER_01It's still incredibly complicated because I'm looking at a picture, you've got four planes in in formation behind you, and it looks effortless, and it's anything but not only the flying, but but the photography as well. If if if you had a choice tomorrow to go out and shoot an animal or shoot an airplane, and and e equal on every other aspect, what would you do?
SPEAKER_00Critter. Really? Oh, yeah, in a heartbeat. Why is that? Well, for everything that is that's human, I mean, critters are they're soft, they're cute, they uh grab heartstrings, they are universal, they um they're incredibly in trouble. Um we so screwed up their world and our own, uh, that um they need every single click and and positive PR they can get.
SPEAKER_01Okay. You but you take the image for me to develop empathy.
SPEAKER_00Is that right? To get you involved in their world. I don't know about empathy, but to get involved in their world, yeah. Even if it's just for a second, um there's I've had too many examples in life, and that's made a difference not to stop. Now, aircraft. Aircraft um in some ways are a little bit polarizing, um, where a photograph of a bird is never polarizing.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned at the beginning, you you gave away something I I was gonna spring on here because we have a friend in common, Amy Vitali, and I was talking to her just yesterday. Um, and I and I told her I was gonna talk to you, and she goes, Oh, I love moose, and you know, you you know, she's filled with enthusiasm. I said, Well, tell me something I need to ask him about uh that he's not going to expect. And of course, it's what you led with uh kangaroo rats, uh, is what she told me I should bring up. So tell me again the story of your involvement with kangaroo rats.
SPEAKER_00We had a I had a quest, we had a quest, because Sharon was involved in this too, to photograph all of California's threatening endangered species back in the 80s. And in this process, I would do the legwork, the research, just figure out who and where, then Sharon to find that person and make it so we actually met up in the field. So Sharon was probably, I want to say, seven months pregnant with our first son, Brent. And our means of transportation was my 71.5 Camaro that I had rebuilt the 350 in. And um, it was uh it did the quarter mile really quick. It was never meant for dirt roads. So the very first time to go out with Dr. Williams, he's out there on the Alcohorn Plains, and here comes our Camaro bouncing down the road and Sharon seven months pregnant, and we get out to this place that is most everybody else would just keep on going. It's flat, there's nothing there, obvious, a lot of dirt. And met with Dr. Williams and instantly the kangaroo rats. Um, so people think of uh uh Norwegian uh rattus rattus, uh sewer rats, pizza rats in California or in New York. Kangaroo rats are acute, they hop around their back legs, which is how they got the generic name of kangaroo. They have a the giant kangaroo rat, which is about the size of your fist, has a tail about 12 inches long. They can actually jump in the air and and change their direction by 90 degrees by swinging their tail. Uh the species, which was dime a dozen before 1850, like I mentioned, got down to just two individuals, luckily a male and a female. And we're out there and uh right off the bat, how do you talk about a nocturnal species to the world, right? Because it's this is this would be 80, this would be the summer of 86. Right? So at that point, the Nikon N 8008 was just out with the I must say SB24 flash. It had infrared. Okay. So most of the time, biologists would try to two biologists would be out there with flashlights, a third one would be trying to take a photograph of this little guy squirreling around. And then giant kanga rat's a keystone keystone species. It's a major farmer, it gathers all these seeds, it buries them, and then they pop up in the spring, and all the other endangered species depend on this harvesting work, this guy. And here I comes, you know, moose with his very pregnant wife and his hot rod with his 8,008. And I'm out there and I instantly have um dual flashes, because one flash, you're not gonna see how cute and plump these guys are. And and uh, all this, if you're wondering why I could recollect all this, because in front of me in my desk is a a tarot sheet from National Graphic Magazine with my photograph of a giant kangaroo rat they used. And um and when I submitted the photograph, I I asked them, why did you, you know, of all the ones, did you select this one in from all those different people? And they said, Well, you're the only one that made the the kangaroo rat cute, plump, and round. And I said, and they I go, Oh yeah, I used two flashes, and there was a ratio. So one side's a little darker, there's a little shadow. You can see they're plump and round. You can see the the they have fur-line cheek pouches that they store sheets in. See, now here's a perfect example. I read too much because all this biology, no one wouldn't know but some geek like me. But we end up spending um, we were out there all the way up into uh the digital age working with Dr. Williams and and uh Patrick Kelly, both who are still dear friends, um uh both retired. And we pit tags, people take that totally for granted now. Uh, Dr. Williams, the first one who brought pit tags and pit tags a little size of a grain of rice that people inject under the skin of their dogs and they can scan them, they ID their dogs. Yeah, well, I help break that technology into the world of critters. So it's it's that geekiness that's all involved. And we worked with these kangaroo rats and and we preserved habitat and and made artificial burrows and moved them around and put out papers, and uh now those two came back after the drought. And uh the recent papers show that all efforts in the 90s kept these guys, which are a keystone species, from from going extinct. And and and I were Amy and I were talking before Christ, you know, after Christmas, I guess, and she said, what was new? She wanted some good news, so I shared that with her. And so that's she was sweet, and she is a sweetie. I love her to death. Why she mentioned it.
SPEAKER_01You know, that that's two species that you can look at and say, okay, you had a large hand in preserving their existence on the planet. And if there's anything that would warm a landscape and wildlife photographer's heart, uh, it would be that. The aviation pictures, of course, are just knock your socks off, beautiful, you know, the static ones as well as the air-to-air. I look at your work, man, and and I am I'm a fan, I'm impressed, and and I am humbled because what I see in there is driven by this commitment that you're talking about, the this personal investment in the value of the work that we're doing. I have enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being on the podcast today.
SPEAKER_00Scott, I can tell you, this is probably the the one of the funnest and best ones I've ever done. I you came to this uh with your A game, and I'm grateful. So uh I'm the one who's humbled and honored by this.
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