FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Kristi Odom
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Kristi Odom, Nikon Ambassador, wildlife photographer, filmmaker, and conservation storyteller, whose work brings viewers close to animals with both visual beauty and deep empathy.
You can visit Kristi's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
Everything goes so fast. I mean, uh everything, like the dolphins and the sharks and the birds, they pick off every fish until every last one is eaten from these giant bait balls. We had our boat out there and uh people had kind of taken a break, except for me and this one other gentleman. I think he he was even in a different boat. I didn't know who he was, but we were the only two that kind of were at the bait ball at this one specific moment in time.
SPEAKER_02That would have been the point when I said, wait a minute, nobody else is here. Perhaps I should get out.
SPEAKER_05Well, I think I made a mistake in that moment in the fact that like you are supposed to move around a lot. Like you just are supposed to move around. And the mackerels ended up seeing my still body and kind of trying to hide from the shark by coming up and swimming all around me. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Comforting, comforting.
SPEAKER_05Like, I'm just gonna hide behind this being over here. She's nice and still. So while I'm filming, I see these dolphins eating and the sharks eating. And the the guy next to me, he had like his camera, his underwater camera, but it had a GoPro running up on top of it, like just 24, you know, like just continuously running. Something came and hit me. Whatever happened was fast. But I remember thinking, I think that might have been a shark.
SPEAKER_00This 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_02Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and my folks, my lord, today we are gonna have so much fun. We are going outside, we're going underwater, we're even gonna visit a couple weddings. Um, we are going to engage with one of the most interesting, fascinating, and inspiring photographers. It's been my good fortune to come across. We're talking with Christy Odom. Christy, I mean, she's a Nikon ambassador, she's a photographer, a filmmaker, an associate fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Um, she raises money for nonprofits and what she calls wildlife heroes. She's a speaker, you know, in demand all over the place. 33,500 followers on Instagram, people that are just absolutely gobbling up this work. She leads workshops all over the world: Patagonia, Rocky Mountain National Park, Alaska, India, Kenya. She leads a workshop called Beluga's Aurora and Polar Bears, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. I assume that's just a little bit north of me, up in Churchill, Manitoba. She's been published in Rolling Stone, National Geographic. She's got a billboard in Times Square, come on. Um, more than 60 international photography awards, including two Nature's Best Photography Awards. Her stuff's been hanging at the Smithsonian. If you are, if you spent any time at all on the BH uh website looking at their videos, you have seen Christie's work. Nature photography, wildlife photography, it can be dramatic, it can be beautiful, it can be, you know, uh violent. Um, but you look at Christie's work, and like I said a minute ago, the thing that really grabs me, you know, by the head and heart is how inspiring all of it is. There's a way of capturing the physical world that just makes your heart swell. Christy, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_05I'm doing really well. That was really kind of you. I'm having a beautiful morning, and I'm excited to be here.
SPEAKER_02Well, I am excited to have you here because this really is just stellar work. And and and you know, there is one thing I forgot to say in the introduction, and I want to bring it up here because you know, we've had a lot of really prestigious guests on the show. We a lot of people have won a lot of awards. You are the first and the only person I have ever interviewed who is won the most spirited varsity math team member in high school. Um that that is an award that I looked at that and I was frankly jealous at the very beginning, but that's also not irrelevant to your photography. That that really does somehow speak to composition, to gear, to just about everything. So I am looking forward to digging into this conversation.
SPEAKER_05Oh my goodness. You went way back. That math team award was I was so embarrassed getting that in front of my whole university or my whole um high school. They laughed at me, but I was proud of it. As you should be.
SPEAKER_03The math team was awesome.
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's do origin stories here for a minute. Um, because you've got a number of places that all sort of converge into being a photographer. Um, beginning with when when you were 16 and your grandfather passed away, he left you some camera gear. Is that what would happen then?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I was close to my grandfather. He was a big introvert, and so was I. And I had a family that really liked being center of attention, and they were all full of life and full of stories. And um, me and my grandfather would sit in the corner and play cards and just kind of be quiet together. And he showed me his world through photographs, like the love he had for my dad, the love he had for his wife. And it was like in this silence, I had this deep understanding of my grandfather. And so I became like really intrigued by his camera, but I wanted to be an engineer like him. I wanted to be gonna ask.
SPEAKER_02He was an engineer. Okay.
SPEAKER_05He was an engineer, and so I wanted to be an electrical engineer, and he left me two things when he passed. One was his Georgia Tech class ring, and the other was the camera. The class ring made sense to me. I applied to Georgia Tech. I got a full academic scholarship for electrical engineering, and I was gonna be an engineer like him. But when I got to university and I was all nervous and introverted, it was like I started pulling that camera out and realizing I could be in the middle of these parties and on the field at these football games. And I used the student newspaper to photograph concerts. I was at the the foot of these amazing bands and just watching and, you know, like standing next to Prince's guitars as he performed. Like it was crazy. And I ended up getting the contract to be a freelancer for Rollingstone.com. And that's when I left three years of electrical engineering to become a photographer. I was like, wow, if I'm already here, imagine where this career could take me.
SPEAKER_02So now there's still a couple of things to unpack there. What now's your grandfather's you know, photo gear? What was this good equipment? Was he a good photographer? Was he just, you know, or is this an intimatic and he's just doing family snapshots?
SPEAKER_05Oh goodness. Well, he had very simple gear, but back in the day, the old mechanical cameras, like they were solid. I love my old film cameras. I had a medium format film camera and I had an old film camera, and and it was it it produced great photos. And yeah, I mean, it was it was definitely looking back. I a lot a lot harder now. It's like if I went back to try to shoot sports on a film camera, I definitely think that would take me a minute. But my first, I ended up, it was funny because like during this time, and you know, I started seeing photography and kind of appreciating it more. And I I started doing some uh I got really into scuba diving. And when I started scuba diving, I was like, ah, I'm seeing these beautiful things and I want to keep them. I want to keep these awe moments, these moments of just, you know, you kind of lose yourself because of the beauty you're seeing. And underwater, it was like this this different world to me. And so my first underwater camera was the Nikonus 5. 36, 36 uh exposures underwater with your film, and you know, everything's manual up to dialing the lens and the distance you are from your subject. And oh my gosh, it's crazy where technology is gone, right?
SPEAKER_02But but now you you've talked about you know scuba diving with your dad. Um, but there's not an awful lot of scuba diving that goes on in Georgia. Um, I mean, so were you traveling? With were you a nature-oriented family just by practice?
SPEAKER_05No, actually not. So when I was at Georgia Tech, I did do a study abroad program where I went to Australia for a semester for a year, actually. And then when I dropped, when I left electrical engineering, I ended up applying to fine arts to a university out in Australia. Um, so I ended up getting into this back then, like this is 2000, like the fine arts degree in Australia was it was so much less expensive than going down the street to to the university in Savannah. So it was kind of ridiculous, like what university cost back then versus what it does now. It was only like three, four thousand a year. It was fantastic. So I ended up in this fine arts degree with a concentration of photo media, and that's when I started doing more of the live concerts that would go up on Rolling Stone's website. And I I think it was living in Sydney that I started diving more and I started falling more and more in love with the natural world. Like Australians have this beautiful respect for the planet, and and it was just contagious. And I fell in love with all the wildlife there. And photography is funny because it's a tool of passion. It's it's and the best photographers are the ones that are so passionate about a subject or so passionate about a specific in life. May it be people, may it be love for weddings, may it be nature. And they pour themselves into their tool, which is the camera, to be able to express and show that passion to others. And throughout my career, my passions have changed, like from loving music as a university student to loving wildlife. I did go into weddings for a while. I would never say I intentionally went into weddings. That was a a diversion, but wow, the amount of love I got to see through my camera, it was a huge gift to be able to be there and see these people's stories. So it's it's been a journey for sure.
SPEAKER_02Well, you you've got you've got a pretty cool story about your your first wedding. So, yeah, I mean, but we gotta there's a little bit of a transition to get there. So you get the BFA in Australia and you don't come straight home.
SPEAKER_05No. So being an international student, I was friends with so many international students. And at the time, the flights coming home were so expensive. A one-way flight from Australia was insane. But the the university was advertising these around the world trips, and it was only a couple hundred dollars more to visit five continents and go around the world. I had all these, I slept on 14 different couches. I had all these friends that lived in random places from Finland to Sweden to um Argentina, and I literally couch surfed. I bought protein shakes as meal replacements because I didn't have any money on the road. I had this flight, I had friends' couches, um, but I had my camera and I had all my rolls of film. Everything was film back then. I had my little lead bags for going through security. And I remember certain places where I'd get a roll of film I'd be so excited about, and I'd like put it in my money belt because I didn't want anything to happen, and I would travel these places like holding these film canisters like probably against my body because they were the most valuable things to me on the road. It was it was it was quite an experience.
SPEAKER_02Clearly, the photography was feeding you back then, but if you look back at those images now, were they any good?
SPEAKER_05Actually, I had a few good ones. I I I had a photo teacher once that said, if you love an image, put it on your wall and see how long it lasts there. And if it stays, then you know you've got something. And I have a couple of my first pictures from scuba diving that I shot on Tri-X film, and I used a little nose grease for when I scratched the negative to processing it. But they were the the pictures that kind of were when I was falling in love with wildlife, and and I'm actually quite, you know, the funny thing is though, in electrical engineering, like my lowest grade was a B. And fine arts, I almost failed out. Like I really, yeah. I had to take drawing twice, and I think the only reason I passed was because my teacher was a laser light drawer and she needed somebody to install lasers, and I knew how to do that. And I was the only one in my class that knew how to install lasers. But um, the first time I took drawing, my teacher came up to me and she was like, You have no way of passing this class, you should just withdraw. So I withdrew, but I I had no, I was so technical. I was so technical. I did not know how to get past the technical and think as an artist, think as a creative. I could do the music photography because it had a bunch of technical elements, but I didn't know how to feel and I didn't know how to express myself and how to, how to really yeah. I think that the almost failed out of fine arts degree was actually exactly what I needed to learn and exactly what needed to, you know, I started to relate because at first I started to see how the masters of painting used Fibonacci numbers for um composition and eye movement, the Fibonacci spiral. And I started to see mathematics and photography. You look at Salgado and your eye spirals in, you know?
SPEAKER_02Like I said, that that that award was not irrelevant to photography at all. But there's a couple things even here though. You know, you talk about you know the technical stuff. When you and when you're shooting the bands, that's not just a technical endeavor. There's a moment you have to capture that is expressive in some way. And so, yeah, there is, I mean, and shooting concerts is a you know a circle of hell in terms of lighting for photographers. But nonetheless, to get a good picture is is a human moment more than F-stop and exposure, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and it's also, you know, it's that taking the butt, it's pressing the button when you feel something or when you see that. Um, and I I I will say that doing those photos while I was doing my fine arts degree was was pretty cool because I did push myself every once in a while, and I I see that. Um and you know it's funny, it's like I really need to pull out those negatives. They were all early two, it was 2000 to 2004. And whenever I did the photos, I did, I did maybe lie a little bit to end the Rolling Stone, which I will admit now. Like I was supposed to have a 24-hour turnaround, but I hadn't moved to digital because I loved film so much. But in Australia, everything happened a day earlier. So I would go and hurry process the film, the process the film and then put it on um a CD and then upload the the images, and they never put together that like I was shooting it the day before, but just using the time difference that they yeah, anyways, maybe they did notice, maybe they didn't care. I I just thought that was funny. Um, but they were like, yeah, no, we need a fast turnaround, so we want our photographers to be digital, and and I just started doing it that way, and they never really said anything. But it's funny because whenever I shot these concerts, I would I would take out my medium format camera and take a roll of film with my medium format camera, and those were never able to be processed for them because um it would take a little bit longer. And you know what's funny is I have all those negatives literally in my crawl space, and I've never done anything with them. It's like one of these days I need to scan them and look at them again. And the role I took for myself that's sitting in the crawl space, I need to like, yeah, I need to pull those out.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you and you didn't even process the negatives or no, the negatives have been processed.
SPEAKER_05It's just I never bothered it. I was a college kid, I couldn't afford scanning all those media format negatives all the time. I, you know, it's kind of funny. But one of these days I'm gonna pull those out because I would love to like just kind of have a better look at the the photos I took for me, you know.
SPEAKER_02So you you finish the degree, you got the around the world ticket, you start couch surfing. Um, you you have said a couple times that this is really where you started to become mostly fascinated with animals. This is one of, I should say, one of the places where you started to become fascinated with animals. But there's so many other options when you're doing this trip. You know, there's culture, there's architecture, there's food, there's sports. So, what is it about the the animal world that started to call to you?
SPEAKER_05I think for me, I I'm gonna tell a little story to like kind of random story, but one of my favorite toys or favorite things that I was ever given as a child was like a magnifying glass and a microscope. And I think it was a Christmas present. And I remember going outside with those things and like looking at leaves and looking at blades of grass and looking at insects and just being totally overwhelmed, puzzled, because I didn't understand fully how it got there and what it was doing and how beautiful it was. And I think for me, there's always just been that overwhelming sense of just awe when I'm out in nature. And that has been something that's always driven me. Like the emotions that I've seen in wildlife, the the being overwhelmed by the size of a tree or overwhelmed by the pattern and a leaf, like, or you know, I'm really into wasps right now and and native bees and how they look like they have armor. It's like I feel like I'm always discovering and I'm always feeling when I'm out in nature. So it's been my biggest passion forever. And I think that there's also throughout my career that I just feel like I've learned from watching animals. And I think that it's become almost a lost art of like what I just got back from India, and one of my favorite moments, I'm out there to photograph tigers, and I love tigers. Um, but on the way out, we stop and there's these weaver ants, and you know, they're making these giant pink nests out of their own uh saliva, and you know, but the weird we we stopped, and and my naturalist that was with me, he points and he's like, Look, they're just starting a new nest there. And I looked, and one of these ants was holding another one on its shoulder, and then a third one was balancing it, and it was pulling this leaf back, making a perfect Fibonacci spiral, might I add, pulling this leaf back, and they were using each other's body and making an ant bridge. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, the engineering, the teamwork, like it was crazy to watch. And in a second, I'm totally overwhelmed by these ants and how they're working together to design and and make this home that they're gonna live in. And it's just one of those things that's like I feel like I can constantly go outside and learn something, and then yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02It's you have quote you have quoted Aristotle on this before. Do you remember the quote?
SPEAKER_05Oh, in all things of nature, there's something of the marvelous.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're living that, aren't you? I mean, that that that's that's heart and soul for you here.
SPEAKER_05That's what I truly feel. And I think that, you know, passion is contagious, and and the more we kind of allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by things, it's beautiful. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of things right now that are testing people emotionally in the world. And and to have a place like right now, oh my gosh, can I tell another story about my last report? Absolutely. Go for it. Like, um, I have osprey that live close to us, and and these osprey are like, yeah. When I was in India, our naturalist, we ended up in this one area by the water. Our naturalist just starts like squeaking. She's like literally squeaking, and she starts like this squeal, and she's so excited, and I mean, almost in tears. And she saw her first osprey, which to her was on her life list. It was a lifer. Oh, it's not common to have osprey in the in this area of India. So she had always dreamed of seeing an osprey, and seeing that m brought her pretty much to the edge of tears. And I felt her passion and her can, you know, it was it was contagious. And I came back, and it's the time of year the osprey are fishing, because yeah, they're so every morning, with the exception of probably five mornings a week, I've been going out and I've just been watching these raptors come from the sky and they take their talons out and they catch the fish, and then they could rotate their talons to put the fish face forward first so that they have less drag in the air. And it's like I have never I mean, they also they take off in a way where the the into the wind, it's kind of like a bush plane in in Alaska, where it's like the wind is underneath them so they can use it getting up. But I'm just totally in awe every morning watching these off. Osprey. And it's been, and it's it's crazy because I think like this naturalist that is amazing human. Like she, her excitement. I'm like, wow, I've kind of overlooked the osprey that live close by. I I need to go back and I need to see actually spend time with them. And and it's you know, I credit her to a lot of like, wow, I might have overlooked this bird that's around quite frequently, but I really shouldn't, you know.
SPEAKER_02You know, inspiration and curiosity are things that can be given to somebody else. Um and and we we should recognize that as when we're receiving it as a kind of gift. The you go around the world, you get back home, and and it shouldn't be this easy, Christy. But Georgia Tech calls you up and says, Oh, by the way, I we want you to do a photo show.
SPEAKER_05I came back, and let me just say, I was like so broke. I discovered I had to use credit cards that I didn't even, oh my God, I racked up so much debt on that trip. I came home and I was like, I need a job, I need to make this trip worthwhile. And Georgia Tech is funny because Georgia Tech, like one of the first days at Georgia Tech, they were like, do that, look to your left, look to the right. Only one of you will graduate. And I'm like, it's gonna be me. And of course it wasn't. But Georgia Tech has some crazy notable dropouts and they celebrate their notable dropouts. And like, I mean, even the varsity, yeah, the varsity, which was a Georgia Tech staple, was across the road, I think was started by a Georgia Tech dropout. I think, don't quote me on that, but if I remember correctly, so they have like a they understand that a lot of people go there and they don't finish. Um, and so it was really nice. Like I had kind of kept in touch and um they asked if I wanted to do a photo show and a talk, and I did. And that was it was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_02It was called what, Six Continents, a girl in a camera? Is that the right title?
SPEAKER_05Gosh, that's so long ago. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But okay, so the the show's there, everybody's ooh and on, but somebody walks up and asks you to shoot a wedding because of your around the world shots.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I got asked to photograph a wedding, and I'm like, I really wasn't into weddings, and I, you know, it was funny.
SPEAKER_02Had you done anything like that before?
SPEAKER_05I had done a few things like that, just assisting people when I was doing my degree and things like that. Like, but you know, this this woman was uh she was quite insistent, and she was like a friend of my sister's, and I ended up photographing her wedding, and I was shooting prints. I'd done a lot of medium format photos, and I called her over to my house to see her photos. Um, so I had all the prints out on my kitchen table, and she picked up the photos and and started going through them, and then she started crying. And I'm like, oh God, what did I do? Like, did I did I miss this one up? And she started crying. And then she looks up at me with tears in her eyes and she says, like, I never thought I could feel that again. And she was feeling the emotion of her wedding day by looking at the photos. And that's when I went, oh wow, I can take pictures and and give people the feeling they had on that day. And it was one of those things where while I didn't like weddings, I had never had that sort of emotional impact on somebody. And I was going, maybe I should, you know, do do this and and I need to pay off this debt, and I need to get off my parents' couch and you know, actually. So I yeah, I ended up going into weddings, and the weddings were amazing. They took me, I I advertised myself as a destination wedding photographer, and the weddings took me all around the world. And when I was doing those weddings, I was building up my equipment, I was building up my skill, and I was also building up my nature portfolio.
SPEAKER_02Well, tell me about that, because you always had kind of a side trip to the weddings you went someplace else for.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I would shoot a wedding in Thailand, and then I would go off to Borneo to photograph the orangutans. So it would, the the destination weddings really hit that, you know, um, getting me to the location, and I had the camera gear, and then I would do these side trips to build up my nature portfolio because wildlife photography is, I mean, it's a expensive, it's an expensive endeavor with the long lenses and the traveling. And but it's funny though, because I always thought you had to go far to be a wildlife photographer, but I was really wrong, like to actually be, you know, to what what ended up launching my career in the wildlife was a local story. And I'd heard that over and over and over again. But living in Washington, DC, it oh, I'd moved from Georgia to Sydney to back to Georgia to Washington, DC. So I was in DC at the time. And um, you know, I wasn't pulling my camera out for those those local um local the local wildlife. Uh I didn't really see much in the DC area until until I did, and then that's what changed my career.
SPEAKER_02Well, what did you see?
SPEAKER_05Okay, so the oh gosh, you like stories. You want to tell you some stories? Because there's some stories.
SPEAKER_03Tell me a story.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so yeah, I had a bunch of portraits of animals that I thought were strong, and I decided to get a portfolio review with the director of photography at Nat Geo at one of the photo conferences. This was probably 12, 14 years ago or something. It was a long time ago.
SPEAKER_02What was this Whitney at the time? Was it Whitney Dunt?
SPEAKER_05No, it wasn't. It was Sarah Leen. I feel bad saying her name because I'm about to tell a very personal story here.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well.
SPEAKER_05But Sarah doesn't mind. She knows I tell this story because yeah. So it was Sarah Leen. So I think it was before Whitney. It was funny because I had all these photos on an iPad. I posted on Facebook that day that was like, I'm going to meet the DOP at Nat Geo. And I got all these like, oh my God, it's about time they discovered you. And oh my gosh, you're gonna, you're gonna make it, and you're gonna be shooting for them. And it was a bunch of praise that I wasn't there, but it put me on a high, high horse. And I rocked up and I'm all like excited and nervous. And I had my photos on an iPad because this was my first review, and she goes through all the photos in a minute or two. We had 20 minutes, and she looks at me and pulls off her glasses and exhales long, like she's thinking about what to say, and then she just lets loose. You look like a photographer wandering in the woods looking for something to say.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I love that quote.
SPEAKER_05It is beautiful. To me at the time, it wasn't beautiful. It would be devastating. Yeah, but no, but that's the I cried my whole ride home, but it it sank in and it hit hard. And it was such a gift because it was the first piece of real, true honesty. And it was so blunt and direct and exactly what I needed to hear. And it was true. I mean, I was going to these random places for the weddings and going and taking these photos of animals that I loved, but where was the story? What was the orangutan going through? What was the environment? What was it? Where are the people that are your wildlife is uh when you do conservation and uh when you do photojournalism in nature, like the animals are about 10% of the story. And so I ended up like letting it, you know, I hated her for a while. I'm gonna not lie, I hated her. And then I let it sink in for a couple of years, and then I wrote this email that was like, I told Sarah this story in an email. I think it was two years later, and I wrote her an email about how much she made me cry, but how it was the first real, honest feedback I had ever received, and that I'm now looking for these stories. And I shared some of my new work, and then I got an email from her assistant asking me to come into the office, and I was like, whoa, pretty freaking cool. And then, you know, I I still had been looking for that local story. Like I ended up um doing some more mentoring with different like I hired mentors in the photojournalist photojournalism field. I got to hire Ed Kashi and worked with him for for um Ed's so amazing. I worked with him for six months, and God, he's helped me more than I could have ever dreamed. He's such a gift and he's such a talented human and kind human. And I ended up um, you know, uh Nikon had had me start talking about, you know, I had been presenting about weddings. Oh my god, there's another story in there. I don't know how many of these stories you want me to get into because it's weird. My life has had so many twists and turns and random paths, but um yeah, I'll get back to that in a second. But Ed, he like really pushed the looking local, look local, look local. And Nikon had had me, I had started doing presentations for Nikon, and and they had asked me to speak on weddings for a couple of years, and I was doing wedding talks, and then there was this one conference where they were like, we want you to speak on wildlife, and I'm like, yes. And they had just come out with the uh the Z's. So they had just come out with the Z6 and the Z7, and they were, you know, I knew that they would want me to put a couple of those pictures of the Z's in the presentation. It was wedding season, and I had two weeks to get them photos. And I pulled out a map of the world, and I'm like, where can I go to get impressive photos to put on Nikon stage? Like I lived in the DC area and I had no time because I was in the middle of wedding season, and I finally randomly got an email about a group of community scientists that met every Friday to count bugs. And I'm like, oh, that's a fun story. And what a great way to show off a camera than to photograph bugs. So I photographed this story, and the group was so passionate about insects. Like I show up and their heads in the grass, and it totally reminded me of a when I was a kid with that magnifying glass looking at blades of grass, and I'm like, here are my people. And they were like, their head was and they were pointing and showing me the eyeballs of dragonflies, the different types of butterflies, and their passion was contagious. And I photographed those insects. I presented that on Nikon Stage. They've never asked me to speak about weddings ever again. It's always wildlife talks.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05And I followed the story, and the story ended up speaking about these everyday heroes that have been tracking the number of insects, which it showed decline because of um differences and you know, because of climate change. It also talked about like the use of pesticide and how like insects the numbers rise and fall. It showed all these first-of species and it helped protect all these parks because they would find these like super rare insects. And so their data was helping these parks, it was helping show that everyday people can make a difference, the importance of planting native plants for the insect decline. So I got really into this story, and then the story ended up getting published. I wrote it, I was so proud of that. And it got published um in Washington Post. And then a few months later, uh, Nat Geo ended up picking up the story for their online. And it was like that was the career-changing moment for me was literally following bug counters. And speaking of counting mathematics, yep, more numbers. I love people that count things. I'm really drawn to people that count things. For I used to even do inventory for, I don't know, anyways. But the story ended up, and all of a sudden I was like, wow, I'm now telling. And Sarah helped me develop that story. She had since retired from Nat Geo, and I had taken some courses. She has these amazing courses. If any of you photographers out there are looking for a mentor, like definitely look into her like females' perspectives of visual storytelling course she does up in Maine, but she will change your life. So working with Sarah and working with Ed has been just so instrumental for me and turning me from somebody that's taking portraits of animals to somebody that's got a story.
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SPEAKER_02When you went to the sanctuary in Bolivia for the first time, you you have said that's when you decided to dedicate your life to conservation. And so I've got two questions. I mean, you you call yourself a conservation photographer more often than you say wildlife or nature or you know any of those other synonyms. You know, what is that little tweak in meaning for you? And what is it about the Bolivia Sanctuary that made you make that switch to, you know, my life is now dedicated to conservation style.
SPEAKER_05Oh goodness. Okay, so this is this is where it gets a little. I hope I'm such an open book. I hope that's not a problem.
SPEAKER_02Go for it.
SPEAKER_05Um so when I um let's see. I ended up in a marriage that wasn't the right marriage for me. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yep.
SPEAKER_05And I was with my ex for 10 years, and let's just say that marriage ended. But it didn't just, you know, it didn't end with a whimper, it ended with a bang. It was definitely a a dramatic divorce. And I was photographing weddings at the time, and I remember going to these weddings and just crying in my car because I had like no love in my own life. Like I'm such an intro, and everything was put into my partner, and we moved to DC for his job. And I didn't know a lot of people. So when we went through the divorce, I was in, I was in a very negative place.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05And I know that sounds it was so funny though, because two things happened to me during that time. One is when I shift my mindset photographing the weddings, I started, instead of like hating people that had love, I started looking for it. I wanted to feel it because I didn't feel it myself. So I started asking a lot of questions and trying to find out why people loved each other. And that's when my photos started winning awards. That's when my wedding photos started winning awards. And that's when I, the first time I did a big public speaking appearance, um, I got on stage and I told everybody, like, this is what I saw while I was going through a divorce, and this is where I felt love when I had no love in my own life. And the weddings ended up giving me that feeling that I could love again. And it was insane. Like, I'm so not a wedding person, but wow, what a gift to be able to feel and believe in love through weddings. So that was something that happened during that time. And I think when we're highly emotional, that's when if we open ourselves up, like that's when we find the right path can come to us. And I did a, I needed to get out. So I did go visit an animal sanctuary in Bolivia. And when I went down there, I thought I was going to be photographing these monkeys that are going to run around and play. I didn't realize the trauma of animal trafficking. Like these animals, these primates are they're highly intelligent. And when they take them from the wild, the main tactic the poachers use is they kill the mothers and they pull the babies out of the mother's arms. And these babies are getting pulled by violent people out of their homes and out of their dead mom's arms. And these monkeys, like primates, some of them, you know, like right when they get rescued by the sanctuary, like they end up like, they end up sometimes in hard places, like where people abuse them more, put them in cages, and then when they get rescued, they go through a lot of psychological trauma. But what I didn't, and some of them don't even make it because of the psychological trauma. But some of them do. And the ones that do have this, like I became close to quite a few of these spider monkeys and howler monkeys that had this joy to life that they felt on the other side of trauma. And it made me first put into perspective what I was seeing as a massive trauma, which was my divorce, and then also realize that there is a joy, there is a joy that I can allow myself if I let go and see it, that I can have on the other side of this hard time in my life. And that's when I realized just the depth of emotion and the depth of personality. And I also felt inspired in a way by these spider and howler monkeys. It's funny because I've I I often ask people, and I have a whole collection of stories, like, what have you learned from an animal? And I have so many stories of stories of resilience where people have felt resilience from mama polar bears and how they how they'll protect their babies through the subarctic and their bodies will go frail. And like, I mean, the stories, if we listen to animals, are just it's so beautiful. And I I mean, even like watching the osprey or watching the the design of the weaver ants, like there's so many things to learn. And and I think that like not only were the monkeys therapy for me at the time, I know that sounds really kind of bizarre and simplified, but it was one of those things that's like this is where I need to be. I need to dedicate myself to showing the emotions, to showing the personality, to showing that we have things that we can learn and listen to with wildlife. When I got that story published with the insect counters, I dropped the weddings. So I that was I've been doing full-time wildlife for pretty much a decade now, which has been amazing. It's been such a beautiful journey. And I think the word conservation is because, you know, I think of wildlife photography, and a lot of it is to me what Sarah Leen's been talking about, you know, told me years ago, which is, you know, taking a portrait but not telling a story, you know, being that person that's so I think that like what I do is more nature photojournalism, it's more conservation-based, it's more like emotions. And I still find that I interchange those worlds words because I don't really know which one. When you say you're a conservation photographer, people kind of, okay. And then when you but when you say you're a wildlife photographer professionally, I get a little more of like, oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_02You are the only person I know um that's been run into by a shark. Um and and and so it it I've watched that video about 10 times. I thought, okay, that would have been the end of my life right then. Right. Uh have a heart attack in the water. Um, but this also brings us back, and then there's a couple other of your underwater images I want to talk about too, but this also brings us back not only to gear, um, but also to a kind of you know, ethics about backgrounds and stuff. So tell me, I mean, first of all, you don't casually get into underwater photography unless you're just dipping a GoPro and saying, you know, this is cute. There's an investment there. There's an investment of time, there's an investment in gear. What made you decide to go and and what were the early stories underwater in a serious way?
SPEAKER_05Oi, I just I mean, I I I had my little Nikonus 5, and I didn't even have lights for a long time. Um, I had little macro extension tubes, and uh trying to think of I ended up, gosh, this is trying to think of where to go with this.
SPEAKER_02Well, tell us start with the shark story. You're out chasing mackerel and you're you're filming dolphins and stuff, and something bumps the housing of the camera.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I've always dreamed of uh photographing the sardine run, and that's the great migration of the sea. It's where all these sardines come together and they form bait balls, and that attracts the whales and the sharks and the birds that'll like, oh my gosh. And it just it attracts everything. It's it's the great migration of the sea, is is why they, you know. And um, so I went down to South Africa to photograph the sardine run. I have a I have my Z9 now with the Nautikim um housing. So it's it's a a bit of an upgrade from that. I can't. And um I end up down there, and um it's funny because there was this one moment, like everything goes fast. Everything goes so fast. I mean, uh everything, like the dolphins and the sharks and the birds, they pick off every fish until every last one is eaten from these giant bait balls. We had our boat out there, and uh, people had kind of taken a break, except for me and this one other gentleman. I think he he was even in a different boat. I didn't know who he was, but we were the only two that kind of were at the bait ball at this one specific moment in time.
SPEAKER_02Um The debate would have been That would have been the point when I said, Wait a minute, nobody else is here. Perhaps I should get out.
SPEAKER_05Well, I think I made a mistake in that moment in the fact that like you are supposed to move around a lot. Like you just are supposed to move around. Like I was I kind of just was really excited about the way the light and the dolphins and and I'm filming and I like being quiet when I shoot. So I put my camera on 120 um frames per second video in 4K. And I just started rolling some video of this light. And it wasn't sardines this time, it was mackerels. And the mackerels ended up um seeing my still body and and kind of trying to hide from the shark by coming up and swimming all around me. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Comforting.
SPEAKER_05Like, I'm just gonna hide behind this being over here. She's nice and still. Um so while I'm filming, I see these dolphins eating and the sharks eating. And the the guy next to me, he had like his camera, his underwater camera, but it had a GoPro running up on top of it, like just 24, you know, like just continuously running. And I ended up like something came and hit me. And then it like was gone, whatever hit me. But this is fast. Whatever happened was fast. But I remember thinking, I think that might have been a shark. I think I need a break.
SPEAKER_02And I hadn't it did not bite you, it just bumped into you.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so it was one of those situations where I was like, I I've got a lot of adrenaline, something happened, I don't know what it was. So I ended up swimming back to the boat and I was like, I need a break. I think I think a shark might have hit me. I don't really know. But then I ended up like going back to the lodge, and then the the naturalist that was with us. I always have naturalists, I love having naturalists. The naturalist was with us. He comes up to me at, you know, when we get back, and he's like, I want to know what you photographed when this happened. And he showed me a still, like it was this green gab from the GoPro that was next to us that literally had a shark's mouth open, right per touching my lens. And I was like, that's AI, that's fake, that didn't happen. And I hadn't even downloaded my cards yet. And then I like ended up downloading my cards and and I I played back this one video and played it back, you know, at regular speed. Um, so I took the slow motion and went ahead and slowed it down, and I like screamed in my room and I was like, oh my God. That's not AI. That shark hit me. And it was funny because I didn't process it until literally I got into my room that night and I was going, oh my gosh. So it was one of those, like, is my mother gonna kill me when this goes online?
SPEAKER_02Have you ever been scared underwater?
SPEAKER_05I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by the movement of the water, like um, like being inside a a boat that's on a tilt, and if there's any surge or whatever, and you don't know which way is up, I'll get like a little vertigo, which gives me a bit of fear. But I don't think I've ever, I don't know if I've ever been afraid by the wildlife underwater.
SPEAKER_02But I mean, you you've also well, a couple, you know, technical things. You're more into or recently you've been uh describing yourself as more into free diving than going in with tanks and stuff. From a photographer's point of view, does that make a difference?
SPEAKER_05Uh diving gives you more stability, which is nice, but free diving. Yeah, I would say so.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, no, no, no, no, diving with a tank. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Scuba diving. Um, but I think that, yeah, no, with the Sardine runs, sometimes there's something freeing. Like I tend to get a little. It's nice because I feel like it's it's good for me to calm down. Like the free diving teaches you to breathe and calm down and and control your, you know. I think I need a little more of that zen in my life.
SPEAKER_02Okay. What one of the most one of your most famous shots is that whale shark that looks like it's in a sunburst. Um and there's a couple interesting stories there. Run us through the light, first of all, which was a bit of a surprise. Um, and then the actual capture of that image.
SPEAKER_05I noticed that the light was being diffracted around my body. And diffraction is when an obstacle causes light to bend. So I noticed looking down that these light rays were moving with me and that I could control where they went by swimming to different spots. So I swam to a spot where I was over the whale shark. I had um, I don't even remember what camera. I think that might have been a Z7 with a 20 millimeter lens on, if I remember correctly. I don't think yeah, that was that was before the the Z9 was out.
SPEAKER_02Um, I was just wondering how deep the whale shark was, how far below um the shark was from you, but okay.
SPEAKER_05Very close. I was on the surface and it was very close. It was, I remember it was a 20 millimeter 1.8 lens, like I remember the lens. Um I was swimming and then um I got the the light burst. I wanted the patterns to mix. I being the the mathematical side of me, I loved the spots and the stripes, and I wanted that that to mix. So I swam into a position where that the stripes met the spots. And I ended up swimming into a school of jellyfish and I wasn't wearing a wetsuit. So that that was a time when I got a little that was not a good time. But um, yeah, and I was on an island where uh yeah, it was just me and and and my naturalist, and there wasn't he didn't really speak English, and I yeah, and there was no medical facilities or anything. They gave me like a lemon and a glass of water. I had all these jellyfish stings up and down. And um, yeah, that was that that was fun. Um, but whenever I see that picture, I think of all of the pain and the jellyfish and the stings.
SPEAKER_02But that's also one of several. I mean, you the the it it you you've got a montage of you maybe 10 stills that go by um waiting for the shark to get in into the right position. Oh, yeah. And and so I mean, when you're doing uh for you know the the technical side, first of all, just light. Um light is is a completely different universe underwater than it is above. Um and this shot's in black and white. Was did you shoot it in black and white? Was this post-process that way? It was post-processed that way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Uh uh uh just because it looked better, or were there other decisions there?
SPEAKER_05When I was at Georgia Tech, I managed the dark room and I fell in love with black and white. I fell in love with the fact that like you could really look at shapes and patterns and and black and white seem to you know, color, just like shapes have a way of making us feel, like a circle is, you know, versus a square or, you know, look at suits and power shapes and things like that. Like colors also have different ways of making people feel. And I found a lot of times with color, if the emotion from the color doesn't quite fit the subject or the emotion I'm trying to say, I love going into black and white. I find black and white is great compositionally to really bring out shapes and patterns and to use dodging and burning to lead people's eyes into certain places. So I do shoot in black and white a lot. I shot in black and white a lot more before I was doing filmmaking, and now I find that I don't put my camera on black and white that much at all. But I used to shoot all the time in black and white, black and white film, and a lot of it was just really because of compositional elements and eye movement and yeah, seeing, making sure that everything kind of I I just love black and white photography.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, but eye movement is a big deal. And and I think, you know, when we talk about composition, you know, we can talk about how a image is read by a viewer and our ability to direct their eye movement through a frame. You have said that in the underwater, you will remove things from the background. Well, and you would never do that for terrestrial stuff.
SPEAKER_05Why? Okay, so underwater, I do the removal of backscatter. So backscatter is particles in the water that light might hit that can draw your eye away from the subject. And I find that in order to photograph without backscatter, there's a big production that needs to happen with lights and getting close. And I find that to sometimes be interfering with the the wildlife. So I'll remove I've I did a story on tadpoles, and oh my gosh, how much tadpoles poop? Like I had no idea. But um didn't know that one, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll remove and then like during the sardine run, they're eating fish. So there's scales in the water everywhere, and there's shiny spots that the light hits. And and I just I do remove all the backscatter in my underwater, but for the land shots, I I won't remove anything. Like I don't remove anything from landscape, you know, like if I photograph an elephant or an orangutan, like I won't remove any of those elements because I just want to keep things as true to nature as possible. I mean, I will say if I take a if I have a picture of myself, like occasionally I'll do a little like lightning my eyes and things like that. And I do that for weddings.
SPEAKER_02That's okay. That's okay. That's okay.
SPEAKER_05It's like I think there's different genres that lead towards different types of editing, but for my conservation and my nature stuff, I I keep everything. And I it it's funny, in wedding photography, there was a trend that came out where like a lot of blurry images became really popular and in. And I really analyzed that because as the engineer in me, I'm like, why? I don't get this. I don't understand why people are liking these really blurry photos. Um, because even with panning, you want something in focus, so it's just it didn't make sense to me. But then when I had the aha moment, it was, oh my God, it's because they feel real again, because a lot of wedding photography is highly processed, and even like the AI editing and stuff, like it is processed, lighting, you know, changing, you know, the the tonal values of skin, and people process the and so the the blurry photos felt real. They felt different because they felt real. And with nature, it's like people are like, oh, this blade of grass is bothering me. And I'm like, well, you couldn't get around it. And I actually think there's something refreshing seeing something that, you know, hey, like, that makes it feel real. I think there's gonna be a people are way over processing nature photos these days. And it's like, yeah, I love doing the dodging and burning, and in and uh, you know, like the darkroom stuff, like to control eye movement, like making certain areas lighter and darker. Like I think that that's it's all like stuff that I used to do in the darkroom. And you can even pull up like the Fibonacci spiral dodge on the spiral lines to get people's eyes to to spiral down. And you know, like that stuff, like anything that was like kind of inspired by the dark room masters, I think are, you know, as long as we're not going Jerry Yulesman on us, I think it's um it's really beautiful, like what the darkroom photographers were doing. And I I actually think it's a little refreshing to to leave your nature images and just do your little dodging and burning for eye movement and your tonal value. And I I don't know, I like keeping things clean.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh, absolutely. And and and my my lord, your your work is just stunning this way. Um, let me ask you, you know, for um aesthetics. I mean, everything is should be driven by story, you know, by what what story you want to tell. But I'm looking at your native bees piece, where you've got a handful of images that are clearly candid's the wrong word with the right idea. I mean, the their shots as something is happening. People are talking, whatever. And then you've got this absolutely stunning picture of a bee with a kind of yellow mist behind it. Um, that is not just, oh, quick, let me grab a shot of this. It's a much more technical photograph. Uh, is that a distinction that you carry around with you? Whether this is going to be more candid or more, you know, I'm grasping for a word, let's just say technical.
SPEAKER_05Or is it documentary?
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much. But I mean, the the B picture is very much unlike the picture of the woman reaching for uh a box, but they both serve the same story. How do you how do you go about constructing in your own imagination the kind of shot list you're looking for?
SPEAKER_05That story, I love that story. I've been um uh following the story about uh native bees in Bolivia because with uh with the Amazon having destruction issues with deforestation as well as fires, native bees are responsible for 70% of the pollination of native forest. And all these indigenous communities uh live along Mediti National Park, which is an area of the Amazon that has this huge distinct variation and elevation. So it's got some of the most biodiversity in the world. Their the water has been polluted with mercury, so they can't eat the fish from the water anymore. And you get indigenous communities that can't eat eat from the earth, um, it causes a lot of problems. So these indigenous communities, I've been working with this um native entomologist that studies native bees and works with native bees, and he goes in and out of these villages to teach the indigenous people how to harvest the honey from native bees. And that does multiple things. It gives them a source of revenue so they can buy food that they need. Um it also gives them honey that they can use, it protects the bees that are working to help reforest the area. Um, and so it's this beautiful story that celebrates people, it celebrates planet, and it celebrates wildlife like the insects. So I've been really passionate about this story, but it's easy for somebody to see a photo of a bear and and and see its power and see its strength, but people don't appreciate little tiny native bees. Like that bee in the photo you're talking about. The locals refer to it as a senorita. It is one to two millimeters in size, so it's tiny, tiny, tiny. And what I was doing with that photo is I was showing its path. So I was using, I used a backlight. I used a static ice light to show the path of the bee's movement to show it wasn't just static in the air. That specific bee was a guard that was guarding the hive from intruders or bees carrying bad pollen back to the hive. And um, so it was going back and forth. So I was trying to show the flight path and pattern with that backlight. And then I used flashes to stop the motion in the air. Everything was with an entomologist on site, so I made sure I didn't bother the path of the bees or impair them in any way. I made sure everything was done ethically, so no bees were harmed, um, which is really important when you're when you're photographing little insects and things that we don't know a lot about. Um, but the story, uh, while the bees are important in the story, what's even more important is these communities um with the the boxes or the beehives, like reaching and learning how to because for a long time, like when they wanted honey, they would um take the honey out in a way that would make the beehive collapse. Um, so it would hurt the bee population. So by teaching them how to do it in a sustainable way, it's it's like they keep getting honey in the same place. And those are stingless bees, which is really kind of cool too. But um yeah, so the bees, I wanted to show bees in a new way that showed a little bit more and taught us something, hence the the path and the role of that bee. And then I wanted to show the people and the documentation of of my bee biologist friend Rupa and how he was teaching and and and showing how to have sustainable beehives in the Amazon.
SPEAKER_02Christy, this is just fantastic work. I I am deeply envious of your field experiences, deeply envious of the technical ability. And and really, I I mean I could not agree more, and I feel you know, a renewal of being inspired by the idea that we are storytellers. We we are not just you know people taking a slice out of of eternity, but we have something to say. And I look at your work and my God, what what you know, the the inspiration and the motivation to take care of the natural world is on every single page. A lot of the stories, folks, that we talked about are on Christy's website, ChristyOtomfineart.com. Um, Christy, thank you very much. I have enjoyed every minute of this.
SPEAKER_05Oh, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate everybody too that's listening. The time today has been such a gift. And and thank you for listening to my story. And if you want to share anything about your story, feel free to reach out to me on social media because I'd love to see what you all are passionate about through photography and and what makes you want to get out and take pictures and show us what you love in this world. May it be people, may it be architecture, may it be bees, may it be insects, like you know, or other insects. Like, but thank you all for your time. It's such a gift, and I appreciate everybody. And I appreciate you, Scott. Great questions. This has been a lot of fun.
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