I met Bruce when I took a workshop he was offering at his home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, and I feel very privileged to be able to call him a friend.

Bruce’s excellence in landscape photography stems from his reverence for the American west and his 30 years of work as an environmental advocate.  Not more than two weeks go by without my receiving an e-mail from Bruce in which he takes up one of the plethora of environmental issues facing the world.  He usually includes a letter that he’s sending to the New York Times, his Congressperson, or the the White House, and he urges everyone on his e-mail list to do the same.  He’s truly tireless in his environmental work and has remained focused and resolute despite the overwhelming magnitude of the problems we face.

Bruce has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics from UCLA and worked for several years as a mathematical analyst and computer programmer for missile guidance systems until he abruptly left that line of work in 1970 and picked up photography as a profession.  He’s been at the top of American photography since then, and is one of the world’s finest dark room printers.

If you ever get a chance to see his work in person, I urge you to do so.  Its the only way you’ll truly be able to fully appreciate the beautiful tonality of his prints.  And if you should ever have the opportunity to take one of his workshops, you should leap at the chance  (I wish I could take the Machu Pichu workshop).  I learned more in one week of working with Bruce than I did in all my prior photographic studies combined.  I’ve since turned to digital photography but the same principles apply and I’m still working on implementing everything I learned in his workshop.

Make sure to check out his website, linked to his name above.  Settle in with a cup of coffee and plan on a long visit.  You won’t be sorry.

© 2009 – 2011, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved.

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Nicklen spoke about growing up with the Inuit in the far reaches of the northern Canadian tundra and spending every moment he could outdoors.  He grew up without telephone, radio, television, or computer games but learned to speak Inuktiut and saw his first polar bear when he was five years old.  He had seagulls and and baby seals as pets and ate raw and dried raw meat as a high-protein snack.

Later, while studying to become a biologist in Vancouver, he began to miss the vast open spaces and the polar animals he had once known so intimately.  Although wildlife biology is very important work, he was overwhelmed by the tedium of book learning and knew that he’d never truly be happy tracking animals for data purposes.  So he imagined the perfect life for himself: a wildlife photographer with National Geographic.  Two years after seriously taking up photography, he published his first book, and some years later he finally made it to National Geographic.

He gave us a slideshow of his awesome photographs and explained how he dives in freezing waters.  Most of his photographs are taken in the the Arctic and Antarctic, and he has learned to read his body’s signals very carefully to know how much time he has before hypothermia and frostbite set in (about 20 minutes).

He also described his encounters with polar animals, like the 400 lb. elephant seal pup who jumped on him and began to suck on his cheek, and the leopard seal that kept trying to feed him penguins.

Nicklen’s singular focus for everything he does lies in his love for polar regions and his desire to protect the bio-diversity of the ecosystem. It turns out that climate scientists have been wrong for the past few years: polar regions are melting at a much faster rate than anyone predicted.  Scientists now have unquestionable evidence that the ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate, and they expect the ice in the Arctic to disappear in the next 7 to 20 years.

In so many ways, Nicklen made me feel like I needed to make up for lost time.

© 2009 – 2011, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved.

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If you’re in DC this week, make sure to stop by some of the galleries, museums, and exhibit spaces taking part in FOTO Week DC.  The whole gamut of photographic styles is represented, from abstract to photojournalism, and you’re sure to find something that interests you.

FOTO Week Central has an especially moving exhibit on Iraq that everyone should see it.

Here’s the website for FOTO Week.

© 2009 – 2011, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved.

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