I'm a photographer from Maryland (USA), carrying out conservation field work since 1998. My clients and publication credits include the National Park Service, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and others (see below). I also served as photographer for the Tropical Science Center and the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica. My Projects | Map

My conservation projects have dealt with forests in the Pacific Northwest, wetlands and wild birds, South African baboons, and tropical rain forests. See the projects page for more. Visit the portfolio page to see a brief cross-section of my photographs. There is a separate India portfolio.

The photo archives provide fast and easy access to thousands of searchable photos, from Alaska to Africa to the Amazon. I have a large catalog of interesting photographs from India, with a separate India photo archive. See the India menu above. You can interface with the photo archive through pre-set galleries, search and keywords pages, or the map page.

You can contact me directly with licensing inquiries. There are beautiful and affordable prints available for almost every image in the archives.

I also have a new video page as of September 2011. I've completed many multimedia projects for conservation groups, including web design, mapping, aerial photo and Google Earth projects, and video production.

Unless noted, all plants and animals were photographed in the wild.

What's New

Visit my What's New page. Go there anytime by following the link in the top menu.

Clients & Publication Credits

National Park Service
UN Environment Programme
Organization of American States
IUCN
Conservation International
World Wildlife Fund
BBC News
The Nature Conservancy
Smithsonian Magazine
Embassy of Peru, Washington, DC
Tropical Science Center
Cambridge Conservation Initiative
Conservation Northwest
Open Space Institute
Western Environmental Law Center
Fisher Fund for Neotropical Conservation
Oregon Wild
Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve
US, European, and Central and South American
universities and scientists

Services

International field work
Photo licensing
Web design
Photoshelter customization
Wordpress customization
Photo processing and color correction
Consulting and training in photography, Photoshop,
Lightroom, Dreamweaver, and InDesign
Mapping and Google Earth creative services
for conservation groups

Thanks

To my family, and my friends and colleagues in the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Peru, India, and South Africa - I appreciate your friendship and support, and your interest in my work. Thank you.

Equipment

I don't get crazy over gear, but for anyone interested, I use a Canon 5d2 and Canon lenses. Standby lenses over the years have been the Canon 17-40, 70-200 f4, and 400 f5.6. I now use a 17-40, 24-105, 85 f1.8, 70-300L, and 100mm macro.

I rarely use flash except in tropical rain forests, where I often use diffused fill flash in the strong dappled light. I try to never use flash when photographing people. I shoot all raw and process in Lightroom and Photoshop to 16-bit wide-gamut tiff. Before digital I shot Canon cameras and Fuji slide film. I also used a Fuji G690 medium format for a while.

Photo Manipulation

It's common to read that post-processing has become almost as important as the actual image capture, but I think about 90% of making a photograph happens by the time you press the shutter. If an image is being called a "photograph" it should, in my opinion, portray what the photographer saw. Otherwise we don't know and can't trust what we're seeing.

The current status quo, where heavy manipulation is the norm, has been a disaster for photography in my opinion, and I try to keep my photographs natural, with minimal use of filters on the camera and minimal post-processing. My India photographs in particular are very lightly processed. Many are straight from the camera.

Photographing Real Life

I started photographing people and culture seriously about five years ago. Before that I only shot nature for the most part. I think there is tremendous value in sharing people, culture, and social issues though photography, and it's also really interesting and rewarding to see new things and meet new people every day. I like candid, natural images of real life, ideally with no artificial lighting or other props. I focus on spontaneous subjects where there is little or no setup time.

Philosophy

Being a photographer is a joy and privilege. I chose this profession because I want to help protect the natural world and I love art and nature. To have made a career out of it is a blessing. Nature is a source of deep, fullfilling inspiration to me personally, and I hope that beyond the conservation campaigns that I've directly worked on, my other images can inspire love for the natural world and a response to do something to protect it.

I am grateful for all of the opportunities that I've had to work in so many special places. I am most thankful to have worked at length in the Klamath Basin, one of the most important places in the world for birds, and with Cape Baboons of South Africa. I've tried to focus on in-depth documentation of places and creatures that need attention and aren't getting it. I'm very happy and thankful to have been a part of many conservation issues.

Contact Me

I can be reached by email at brettcolephotography (at) gmail.com. My mobile is (240) 578-0732. I'm on Skype @ bhcphoto. Sorry, I don't use Facebook or Twitter. Visit the contact page.