There are outdoors photographers like most of us who go out snap some nice photos and then keep them stuffed away somewhere on our hard drives. We make no money and do it just for fun. Then there are the real photographers of the outdoors who shoot for a living and come up with some of the loveliest stuff you’ve ever laid eyes on.
The fact is, if there were any single ideal job (other than being Hugh Hefner) it would have to be adventure outdoor photographer. I have sitting here on my book shelf several volumes of outdoor photography by folks like the late Galen Rowell and James Balog. And over at NPR I noticed that there is a new volume worth checking out by the well-known photographer Gordon Wiltsie.
Wiltsie has shot some of the world’s best mountain climbers and explorers while out on expeditions, and he has compiled some of the best among those photos in a new book called To the Ends of the Earth: Adventures of an Expedition Photographer. In this NPR interview, Wiltsie talks with Alex Chadwick about his adventures and profession, including some of his other work as a writer. To wit, he was the author of a critically acclaimed study of the nomads of Mongolia’s Darhad Valley that was featured in the October 2003 National Geographic.