TREES
About TREES Artists
The TREES exhibit is a hallmark of the LOOK3 Festival as majestic images from nature are suspended on banners high in the trees along Charlottesville’s outdoor pedestrian mall. The TREES exhibition is ecologically centered to promote environmental awareness and conservation. This exhibit was made possible by the generous support of Jeffrey and Darlene Anderson and the City of Charlottesville. The TREES Talk is an educational, environmentally driven presentation in The Paramount Theater the evening before the Festival begins. LOOK3 donates complimentary tickets to area schoolchildren and non-profits as part of its community outreach program.
George Steinmetz – 2011
Best known for his exploration photography, George Steinmetz sets out to discover the few remaining secrets in our world today: remote deserts, obscure cultures, the mysteries of science and technology. A regular contributor to National Geographic and GEO Magazines, he has explored subjects ranging from the remotest stretches of Arabia’s Empty Quarter to the unknown tree people of Irian Jaya. Since 1986, George has completed 18 major photo essays for National Geographic and 25 stories for GEO magazine in Germany. His expeditions to the Sahara and Gobi deserts have been featured in separate National Geographic Explorer programs. In 2006 he was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to document the work of scientists in the Dry Valleys and volcanos of Antarctica. Born in Beverly Hills in 1957, George graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Geophysics. He began his career in photography after hitchhiking through Africa for 28 months. His current passion is photographing the world’s deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider. This experimental aircraft enables him to capture unique images of the world, inaccessible by traditional aircraft and most other modes of transportation. George lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife, Wall Street Journal editor Lisa Bannon, their daughter, Nell, and twin sons John and Nicholas.
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Steve Winter – 2010
Steve Winter has been a National Geographic photographer for almost two decades and more recently, has been the Director of Media at Panthera, a non-profit organization focused on wildcat conservation. Growing up in Indiana farm country, Steve dreamt of becoming a photographer after receiving a camera for his seventh birthday. Over the next few years, Steve’s father taught him the basics of photography and cultivated his artistic interest in the field. After graduating from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco, Steve’s childhood dream became a reality when he began his career as a photojournalist for Black Star Photo Agency. Since then, he has gone on to produce stories for GEO, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Natural History, Audubon, Business Week, Scientific American, and Stern, among other publications. He has also worked for non-profits and commercial clients including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Merck Pharmaceuticals, Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, and many others. Winter became a National Geographic Society Photographer in 1991, covering a multitude of subjects for the magazine, including Cuba, Russia’s giant Kamchatka bears, tigers in Myanmar’s Hukaung Valley, life along Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River, jaguars in Latin America, and snow leopards in Ladakh, India. He recently traveled through India, Sumatra, and Thailand to document the dwindling population of Asian tigers. Winter’s powerful and moving images of these beautiful animals appeared in the December 2011 issue of National Geographic. In 2008 Steve was crowned BBC’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his photograph of a snow leopard taken in Ladakh, India. Most recently, he won the 68th Picture Of The Year International’s Global Vision Award for his story on Kaziranga National Park, where he was charged by rhinos way more times than he ever cared to experience.
www.stevewinterphoto.com
Michael Nichols – 2007 & 2010
Michael “Nick” Nichols is a wildlife journalist; his narratives are epics where the protagonists are lions, elephants, tigers, and chimps. Scientist-conservationists like Jane Goodall, J. Michael Fay, Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Craig Packer are all in featured roles. He came to National Geographic magazine with the legacy of a childhood spent in the woods of his native Alabama, reading Tarzan and John Carter of Mars adventures. Nichols became a staff photographer for National Geographic magazine in 1996 and was named Editor-at-Large for photography in 2008. From 1982 to 1995 he was a member of Magnum Photos. He lives in Sugar Hollow, VA, with his wife, artist Reba Peck. Nick has published 27 stories with National Geographic, most recently “Orphans No More” (NGM September 2011), the final chapter in his twenty-year endeavor to document the emotional intelligence of elephants. His “Redwoods: The Super Trees” (NGM October 2009) story used ground-breaking rigging and stitching techniques to create an 84-image composite of a 300-foot-tall, 1,500-year-old redwood tree. NGM will publish another tree on its pages using this technology in late 2012. Currently, Nick is on assignment in Tanzania documenting the lions of Serengeti. He is also Co-Executive Director and Founder of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, VA. At the heart of Nick’s mission is to preserve true wildness. Whether in the redwood forests of California or the acacia plains of Kenya, it must be documented, nurtured and protected. Nick is working to create images that show what we have to gain in caring for this magnificent planet and what we have to lose.
www.michaelnicknichols.com
Thomas D. Mangelsen – 2009
Thomas D. Mangelsen, a Nebraska native, is recognized as one of the world’s premier nature photographers. Mangelsen’s love of nature, his life outdoors, and business success were heavily influenced by his father. An avid sportsman, Harold Mangelsen took his sons to favorite blinds along the Platte River in Nebraska to observe the huge flocks of ducks, geese and cranes that migrate through the area. From these outings Mangelsen learned important lessons for photographing in the field, including patience, waiting for the right moment and understanding animal behavior. In 1965, Mangelsen began studying business at the University of Nebraska. Tom transferred to Doane College in Crete, Nebraska in 1967, where his first love prevailed and he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He continued postgraduate study in zoology and wildlife biology at the University of Nebraska and Colorado State University. In 1974, he worked as a cinematographer, which led to the opportunity to film whooping cranes for the National Geographic. The resulting Emmy-nominated television special, “Flight of the Whooping Crane”, chronicles the plight of these endangered birds and the efforts to bring them back from the brink of extinction. In 1990, Mangelsen photographed and produced the PBS Nature and BBC Natural World film, “Cranes of the Grey Wind”, a documentary on the life cycle of the sandhill crane. Mangelsen’s work has been published in National Geographic, Life, Audubon, National Wildlife, Smithsonian, Natural History, Newsweek, Wildlife Art, American Photo and many other publications as well as featured on television programs from The Today Show and Good Morning America, to CNN’s World News and ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. In addition, Mangelsen is co-founder of the Cougar Fund, a founding Fellow of The International League of Conservation Photographers, on the international advisory council for the Jane Goodall Institute and a board ambassador for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.
www.mangelsen.com
Flip Nicklin – 2008
Widely regarded as the world’s leading cetacean photographer, Flip Nicklin grew up around his father’s small dive shop on the California coast. He went on to become National Geographic’s premiere whale photographer and marine mammal specialist. Over the last quarter century Flip has photographed more than thirty species of whales and dolphins, some so endangered their very survival is in question. In 2001 he co-founded Whale Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to research and public education. The mission of Whale Trust is to promote, support, and conduct scientific research on whales and the marine environment and develop public education programs based directly on results of scientific research. Whale Trust is committed to promoting and fostering Maui as a unique living laboratory for whale research and the marine environment. For information, please visit www.whaletrust.org.
www.flipnicklin.com
