I'm a photographer from Maryland (USA), carrying out conservation field work since 1998. My conservation projects have dealt with wetlands and wild birds, South African baboons, and tropical and temperate rain forests. See the projects page for more.

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. I've completed many multimedia projects for conservation groups, including web design, mapping, aerial photo and Google Earth projects, and video production. My Projects.

I've tried to design my site to be engaging and easy to use. Visit the portfolio page to see a brief cross-section of my photographs. I have a separate India portfolio. You can read seven of my photo books on my ebooks page. I also have a video page with some work from India.

My photo library provides fast and easy access to thousands of searchable photos, from Alaska to Africa to the Amazon. You can interface with the photo library through pre-set galleries, search and keywords pages, or the map page. I have a separate India photo library with about 4,000 photographs.

Please contact me directly with licensing inquiries so I can give you personal service. Beautiful prints are also available for most images in the library, with worldwide delivery.

Clients & Publication Credits

National Park Service
UN Environment Programme
Organization of American States
IUCN
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

What's New

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

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 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 100 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 the opposite. To me the capture has never been more important, because we've never been less able to trust what we see in photographs. I love nature, and I want to create honest, natural, organic images where nature speaks for itself. This extends to people and culture because we are a part of nature.

I think 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 through the lens. Otherwise we don't know and can't trust what we're seeing. Photo art is wonderful, I'm all for it, but I think it's a very important distinction to make, and the artist should make clear the nature of their work.

I try to keep my photographs natural, with no use of filters on the camera other than a polarizer on rare occasions, and minimal post-processing. My India photographs in particular are very lightly processed. Many are straight from the camera.

I'm an opponent of the kind of image manipulation that has become commonplace in the past five to ten years, with the mainstreaming of Photoshop, the proliferation of powerful plug-ins, and the popularization of HDR and photo apps like Instagram - things like background darkening or removal, simulated shallow depth of field, HDR, simulated lighting effects, heavy false vignetting, tinting, object removal and additions, texture overlays, sky substitutions, blemish removal on portraits, reshaping with liquify, etc.

The current status quo, where heavy manipulation is the norm, has really hurt photography in my opinion, so much so that I think photography has begun to lose its meaning and become an endangered medium.

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 images with no flash, reflectors, or any other props or aids, and I try to 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, nature, and people. 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 photographs 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 especially 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.