#008: What sets conservation photographers apart from all other photographers? The answer lies in part in what we do after our photos are published. As a conservation photographer, this is often when the hard work of making an impact actually begins.
Early into your journey as a conservation photographer, you discover that the work you do with your camera is only a tiny fraction of the entire scope of your advocacy.
You shoot a story. The images are in print, people have hit "like" on social media, and the fanfair around the story has died down… but the issue that you documented likely still persists. The work doesn't end with publication. The hardest and most important work often just begins.
Clay Bolt is a conservation photographer who takes this hard work to heart and is an incredibly inspiring example of someone who works tirelessly and is a catalyst for positive change both through his beautifully crafted photographs of pollinator species, and through the relentless behind-the-scenes work to change laws, establish protections, and build a genuinely engaged audience around the conservation efforts he cares so much about.
Clay Bolt specializes in photographing the world’s smaller creatures. His current major focus is on North America’s native bees and the important roles that they play in our lives.
Clay was a leading voice in the fight to protect the rusty-patched bumble bee under the Endangered Species Act, which became North America's first federally protected native bee in 2017. In 2019, Bolt became the first photographer to document a living Wallace's Giant Bee—the world's largest bee—as a part of a four person exploration team to rediscover the species in the Indonesian islands knowns as the North Moluccas.
Clay has accomplished extraordinary things in his work - and much of it accomplished after the photos have been made. In this episode, we get to sit down with Clay as he shares both the extraordinary stories of field work with camera in hand, and his knowledge and advice about what to do to really make an impact.
Get the full show notes and download a handy transcript of the episode at JaymiH.com/8
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