Joel Saltore

Last night on PBS there was a National Geographic special highlighting Joel Saltore. One hour of his life with NG and the places he has gone and the pictures he has captured. It was a great show to see. The show was made in 2007 and he was shooting an F6 with slide film and they showed some stuff of the NG editors looking over the slides and the conversations of Saltore with the Editors. I enjoyed the show. In one scene they were showing the Bears at Yellowstone catching a fish trying to move up stream. We have all seen that shot many times. They then moved the camera back and it showed a platform built there with Photogs sardined on it trying to grab a few hundred snaps. However that was one of the topics that Saltore brought up and that was to find a way to make a different shot that stood out among the mass. I am sure anyone that is interested could watch the PBS show on-line or catch another showing on PBS this weekend as they usually run shows of this type several times.

Joel Sartore (which I think is the correct spelling of his last name) is one of my favorite NG photographers. I hope that I can find this show on my PBS station; thanks for the heads-up.

He comes across as a very down to earth, likable guy. I have a friend who was a picture editor at NG and she says he's terrific. Very kind fellow.

In recent years, NG's photography has been all-over-the-boards in style and substance. Joel's photography is modern classic National Geographic. Just as the old signature look was to have the "red sweater" in the photographs somewhere, his photography represents a continuity not just from one article to the next but from our current generation to the past.

This isn't to say that Joel is "old school", but that his style respects the "old school" and is a good reference point to work from.

Sorry about the poor spelling of his name. He does come off in the TV series as being a good guy, hard working and a serious family man. His pictures are really great.

I saw this PBS special too and it was great. I think he has gone digital now with D3 Nikons but I guess that most commercial stuff has went that way. The way the story went it appeared he stuck with film longer that many of the others at National Geographic. I think that he shot 800 rolls on one of his assignments in the story.
Marvin

I remember the part about 800 rolls of film. That is an enormous amount of film to shoot. I was suprised to see he was shooting film in 07. His pictures are great however. I am lucky because my wife always knows when there is a show like this on and she gives me the heads up about it. I was able to catch the Ansel Adams special a few months back also. I would miss everything without her because I do not watch much TV.

Yeah, it's Sartore.

I ended up with some of his old, expired film actually (go figure).

Yes, I also heard he shoots mostly digital now.