DAVID YARROW: EVERY PICTURE HAS A STORY

artists can capture through a lens. Like my friend and guest, world renowned fine art photographer David Yarrow. His work is spectacular, intimate, immersive, visceral, whether he's capturing wildlife, landscapes, or humans. Tom Brady is a huge Yarrow fan. He wrote the foreword to David's book of Breathtaking Pictures. Brady says David's work makes him feel awe, humility, reverence for how beautiful the world is.

David is a gifted storyteller through his art, but he's also a great storyteller about how the pictures were created. So I've got an idea to help you enjoy the conversation even more. Go to David Yarrow dot photography A spells It Why a r r ow. You can use your phone or ideally a bigger screen and you'll be blown away by the quality and breadth of his work. And David's going to share stories about how some of

his best pictures were made. They're all on the site and you can search titles like Dexter of a Hippo, Hello, a polar Bear, Shot, the Killers, and others. David also tells stories about working with Russell Wilson and cr in a wild West setting, Cindy Crawford, recreating an iconic Super Bowl commercial, and paying tribute to classic scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street and You're the end of the episode as a story about a man, the sea and an orca that takes the most surprising turn of any

story ever told on this podcast. We out of our conversation where David started in sports photography as a twenty year old straight out of Scotland. He took one of the most powerful pictures of sports celebration ever, one that launched his career, Diego Maradonna raising the World Cup trophy in Mexico City. Six. Yeah, I mean I looked back. I never thought then that um My Guinness, fifty five years on from there, I'd be having this conversation about it.

Um I hadn't taken many good pictures in the World Cup. I was too young. I hadn't had enough experience. It was the days when cameras didn't have ato focus. He had followed focus and I was just a bit green. But raw couldn't cope with the high sun, which I loved.

The games were at twelve o'clock Mexican time or three o'clock, but I got lucky at the final whist, so I thought the only way I was going to get a picture was to leave all my other cameras behind the goal and just go with a very small, wide angle. I was slimmer, fitter that I am now, and I could get very close to Maridonna, and just at the key moment he looked right at me. He was on the shoulders of another player. Tons of argentineans on the pitch.

It was total chaos. You'll never have something like that again after any six because fans won't be allowed onto the pitch. It's a bit like in the Gulf. You remember when they finished an open when the players went through the played their second shot to the eighteenth. There was a massive charge of spectators, and then the winning player would make his way rather biblically through the first row of the crowd. And I think that still goes on a little bit, but it's more orderly than it

used to be. This was total disorder, chaos, and I just got lucky. But I was in the position to take the picture, and I had the right lens, which was a wide angle, I think a thirty five mill so I had the contextual narrative of the stadium behind and Maradonna. Um, if it was just Maradonna in the Cup, there wouldn't be a picture. If it was just the stadium, the biggest stadium in the world, I think then without Maredonna,

there wouldn't be a picture. It's the coalescing of those two variables, the two layers put it together, and the fact that he was looking right at here. You said biblical, that's a perfect description. He's standing there, arms raised like a god, the World Cup trophies in one hand, just at the same level as I think the flags that are ringing the top of the stadium, and it's just it's a composition. You couldn't have have stage any better

than that. And yeah, above this massive humanity, there's his face and your lens and it's directly in front. And I would encourage people to seek that out because now that he's passed um, his legend has only grown. But to have that moment a pinnacle of one of the great soccer careers ever and be able to capture that and you're right. Decades later, people still refer to that picture.

I was on a plane the other day before COVID and in the Maradonna movie they use that picture and I had no idea here that they used it in the movie. And I was I get more emotional on planes and I do on land like a lot of people. And I started to get a little bit emotional scene

my picture. So I have no one to tell. And I called the stewardess over with the bustom and she thought I wanted a whiskey or whatever, and I was getting that's my picture, and there's a lunatic and see B sixty one or whatever, and you're allowed to brag, that's beautiful. One other sports photograph that is very different from the chaos and the confusion of Azteca two. The Gentility of a porch at Augusta National. Gary Player was

a dear friend of yours. There's a photograph with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicholas and Gary Player in their Master's Champion green jackets on this very elegant looking porch and I think they're in rocking chairs maybe, And and that was pretty close to the time when Arnold Palmer passed. It is one of the last pictures captured of him. So what an incredible moment that must have been. It was. I'm

not prone to nerves. I've been very fortunate to me to let you a lot of extraordinary people in my life and and through my art sit down and have conversations with people that I would never expect it. And I think that was one of the few occasions that I've been a little bit nervous because you had the kind of Mount Rushmore of golf, you know, that area of Augusta behind the eighteen well, and there must have

been five people watching me take the picture. Um, but typical of Gary, he only told me about forty five minutes beforehand that I was going to be taking the picture, and I had the wrong lens and I had no time to go and change my lens, so I couldn't get them to move backwards. You can't tell Arnold Palmer to move his seat back. So I was stepping further and further back, and then I fell into the hedge,

and because I didn't see what was behind me. And I think it's fair to say that, and I mean this with the hugest amount of respect to Jack Nicholas, but he's had his picture taken enough and I can't understand why another picture by another photographer might know fill in with the joys of spring. But that's why he's that's why he's smiling. It's because he's just seen me fall into the back of the hadge, because whatever it takes me. But if you have to take a prat

fall to get your subject to loosen up. What's amazing about that picture, and it's true of a lot of your work, is that there's such intimacy in that image, even if it's hastily taken in less than ideal lends.

There's such an intimate connection to the subject. And yet you'd never know there were five hundred people breathing down your neck as you took it, And and That's what's so remarkable about a lot of your great images that will get into the wildlife is just the intimacy that that absolute visceral connection between the person looking at it and the subject. Yeah, I mean you're kind to say that.

If if someone asked me who is my favorite film director, was it's quite easy in the Spielberg And then there'll be so many others would come after Spielberg. And why because he's the most emotionally invested film director, um, And there's a lot of others that are very emotionally invested. Photography is all about emotion, and in order to elicit emotion in others, I think you have to have a degree of immersion um and that tends to often come

from proximity. It's quite difficult to make people emotional about things if the distance between the camera and the subject matter is a long way. There are there are the examples that disproved that rule. When when Jack Nicholas himself, You'll remember when when he won his last Masters and he sunk that big part at seventeen and he raised his putter and his head wearing the yellow shirt. That's quite an emotion shoot picture. And I know if you the you know a few of the people that got

that picture. Um, but I was taking with a long lens. It's quite difficult generally when you're far away to to be able to convey that. And that's why I don't tend to work with low lens is too much. Yeah, I could geek out on the photography aspect of this because I'm a hack hobbyist, but I do love it. I will indulge myself on that and and and risk losing the attention of other people. But that is the problem when you when you shoot pictures of dangerous, large

wild animals, it's tough to get close. And we do tend to take the pictures from far away, and that's what sets apart the shots you take on vacation versus the beautiful ones that sell for a lot of money that you take. But yeah, we'll get into some of the stories because to get close, to get low, to get eye level, to get access not only takes a hell of a lot of preparation and planning and money. In some cases, it takes a lot of balls to put yourself in a harm's way, in your cameras in

a harm's way to do it yeah. I mean, I've been doing it a long time, and what I do know is that it's become harder now to do some of the things that I've done over the last six or seven years. Not because I was in any way doing things that are unethical, but the whole issue of invading animal space and there their way of life is an issue that's being brought up in the very same way that so many issues we never thought about three or four years ago are being brought up. Um and

um I am. I've got mixed feelings about it. I think it's gonna be tougher for other people going forward to use remote controls in case the animal steps on the remote control. Forget about the camera, what happens if it hurts its foot, What happens if an animal charges a jeep. Don't worry about the people in the jeep, but if the animal does damage to himself by charging

the GM um. So I'm very conscious, increasingly conscious these days, of setting a standard, and I guess I'm there to be shot at metaphorically because people rightly or wrongly see what our brand and maybe maybe I'm there to set set standards. Um. But if you work with the right people on the ground, and we do tend to um. You can get close legally, you can get on the ground. It's all about homework and and if you work with the right people, everything is possible. I in in in

fifteen years. All my dangerous moments, Chris, have always been with people, never with animals. The moments I've felt for my life have always been with people, because people can do three things that animals can't do. They can get drunk, they can get high, and they can buy a gun. And it's the best of my knowledge, animals can't do any of those three things. So when people ask me you're you, You've you've been cavalier, You've you've put you put yourself in harm's way. I can't think of an

occasion with an animal um I've had. I've had bears standing over me in Alaska in the summer, but they've eaten salmon over the last twenty four hours. They're not in the least bit interested in me. UM. But if you had that same situation before that, before the salmon run, you'd be in a different maybe a different dynamic. So just go during the salmon run. For sure, you have to have the knowledge you have to have local experts. You have to have the ability to figure out when

an animal is the most dangerous and not dangerous. I don't know, I might take issue with that. Have you seen some of your videos. Um, You're in a tiny, shitty little canoe in this Embasie River, which is a beautiful river to raft in, but it was also filled with crocks and hippos, and you're going after Dexter the hippo, and it's very difficult to shoot hippos. They're kind of shy,

their their ornery. They're these big, dark animals that spend most of the time underwater, and canoeing around hippo laden waters seems pretty damn dangerous to me. He ended up getting this amazing shot by laying on the bank and getting kind of an eye level shot as he takes his big giant head out of the water, but it seemed a little dicey to get. I have to confess

the animal that scares me the most is the hippo. Um. I am petrified of hippo's So I got charged a few times in Tanzania, and they can't run quicker than you, and I think they do kill more people than any other animal in Africa. Um, but Dexter, he doesn't know he's called Dexter. But Dexter is a bit of a bluffer. He gives you a couple of chances. And it's like if you know, if you're playing poker with Dexter, you know what cards he's got in his hand to begin with.

How do you know what's in the mind of a hip. I mean, yes, you're with the guy that is familiar with him. But ultimately, humans we always think we can read this animal, we know how he's going to behave because we we have an acquaintance with him. I mean, and that's you're playing their percentages, right. I mean, ultimately you don't know what a particular lion or tiger or hippo is going to do when you get pretty damn

close to him. Trust isn't It is such a short word, but trust is the foundation on which I've built so many of our assignment. Trust in humans or animals are both. You're trusting the human that in his understanding of the animal in question, and we I could get I could cite so many examples, Polar bears up in Alaska, where the Innuit would say, don't worry about this one. I know his parents, you know, and you're going, really, do you really know this Polar bears parents? Is he really

not going to go for me? Well, there's a shot you took. I mean, people can go find this shot on your website where it looks like you are nose to nose with the polar bear. It looks like he is so close. I know that's not that's not a long lens and his nose is right in the camera. That was a picture called hello. We managed to call it hello just before Adele called her song Hello. So it shows how long ago this picture was taken. But I actually managed to take a selfie of myself in

the polar bears eyes. But so I think it was taken with the standard lens. UM. What people don't know about that was between me and the polar bear. I'm in a tiny canoe and there isn't much evidence of polar bears jumping onto canoes. Um and my innunate guide who's the boss up there, felt reasonably comfortable with the whole thing. He was a he was a four year old bear as well, um and more inquisitive than anything else. But at the sure works because he's looking head on me.

You've been on the water taking pictures of sharks as another iconic image which is sought after because it is appeals to anyone that believes they have a predator inside of them. And it's this great white shark with his jagged teeth, white open and he's got a seal, a fin of his seal actually about to be clamped onto it. What watch the story behind that having to get down in in the water to to grab that. But that was actually take That was in a boat in full spay,

just around the corner from Cape Town. And from about two thousand, two thousand and five to two thousand and twelve, I got fascinated with great white behavior in this bay where the sharks would come in to attack the seal pups. They'd only do it in June July, their winter, and then only attack attack breach in the first hour of sunrise for reasons none of us know. We we don't know why that it's the case. Maybe the lighting makes

it easier for them to identify the seals. Um And I spent about thirty hours in the water waiting for this to happen, and every time I took a trip down to Cape Town. It might have been about of course, and I got nothing. I was coming back with nothing. And it's one of the we hear so many of these maxims in sports and business about success being failure and never quit. But that's my never quit story because I think I was probably done, maybe about dollars and

I haven't got anything. And then my final time that I really had an opportunity and it happened. Um. And I tell that to people now as the stories. That's why a you start off with a lot of failure, you must never quit, almost believe in yourself and it can be tough, but you've just go to persevere. And then about three years ago an Orca killer whale came into that area and killed a great white shark. Um and the sharks of all god that never appeared there again.

So I had that one moment in time and then wonder whether that will that moment, that decisive moment, will ever be captured again because the sharks of all gold there used to be about thirty or forty great whites around that island. Um uh, but what are from Cape Town? And now they're none? Wow. Well, you talked about the frustration the patients that it takes. These images and we'll get back into your connection with film. They're very cinematic.

There's a there's a glamour in many of the shots, but there's the unglamorous part that goes into it, and we won't well on that because people won't rather focus on the glamour. But what goes into the getting it that kind of image you said, the access being in the right place at the right time. You use luck, but you have to you have to make your own luck and talk about that, but just the the work that goes into being ready for that moment when all of a sudden you can press them the shudow. Yeah,

you know, I'm I'm a photographer. I'm not a wildlife photographer. I'm just a photographer. Wildlife photography is a very crowded space. Anyone can go in non COVID years to Tanzania, to Kenya. They can buy a long lens, they can work with the right guide. They can be in the right place at the right time to capture a decisive moment of predation or whatever. And there are a lot of these pictures circling the world right now of those kind of things and I want to be as far away from

that as possible. I want to try and do things that are authentic, that are different that the world hasn't really seen before, or perhaps not in the way that I'm photographing it. That's quite a hard task if you set the bar that I um to try and transcend. That's why I was in Antarctica last week for forty five minutes to try and transcend. I failed because of things beyond my control. But we'll go back to Antarctica

next month because it's the Extra Mile. And it's a bit of a cliche, but you know, they're saying that there are no traffic jams on the Extra Mile. And if I go to somewhere where I see ten other photographers, it goes back to my days of sports photography. You know Center Cord at Wimbledon very very well. It is incredibly difficult, no matter how talented those sports photographers are, to get a picture of Djokovic or Nadal or Federer

that the world hasn't seen. The world is swamped with those kind of pictures, which is slightly unfair on the great sports photographers that they're not seen to be pieces of art because you see so many of them knocking around. I'm I am. For you to be art has to stand out. It can't be common, can have been seen before, no matter how well executed. A beautiful wildlife shoine is You're you're not interested in that because it's been done before.

You're looking for something different. Of course, it's not. It's not for me to determine what's art or not. Is for the viewer to is for the ultimately for the collector of the viewer to determine what is art. Um. But at the margin um East Africa. Peter Beard does some extraordinary work in East Africa. But it was it was art, It wasn't too literal. He threw pictures of naked girls and threw blood onto He was high blessed a lot of the time, which is where his genius

came from. Um. But I think there has to be something that transcends. There has to be something that allows. I remember remember speaking to the chairman of the Tape Modern in London, and he said, of all the forms of arts in the world, the one that leads me the most cold is wildlife photography. And I said, why is that? He said, I don't don't need to be told what a giraffe looks like. I know what a giraffe looks like. And there is a danger that wildlife

photography has become too literal. The only other way you get around that is you go, as you were suggesting, to places that other people just don't go to. And and we do try to go to some places that involve a commitment of time money. If we do a stage shot working with famous people, are average days production cost is a hundred thousand dollars. If we do um a shot in the wild, the average production costs is

maybe a twentieth of that. And what we're trying to do is move that second number up to go to places that are just a bit more extreme. Uh and and involve a little bit more hardship as well. Well. Your pictures are not about what a giraffe or any animal looks like. The intimacy gives you a near what they are like inside. I mean, you can see into their soul if it's done properly. I mean, I've got pictures behind me here that I took with a long

lens that what you're referring to them, amahabby. These are African cats back here and they're not extraordinary, but they just bring back memories and I think that they do, and I think that's perfectly okay. If you're trying to do what you're doing, that's something different. But but David, some of these shots of of of lions or tigers from ground level from why you can you and you you love wolves because they have I guess expressive eyes or there's a there's an intimacy or an element of

danger menace with them. But the best ones are you're seeing into the animal soul. You're not just seeing what they look like. The eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul um and uh, if they're true, if that's truting a human and probably truting an animal as well, other than maybe the polar bear because they're so dark that you just don't see anything in the line um. But yeah, we were with wolves are very sexy animals and they vote a lot of different emotions in world

was sexy animals. I think because every man wants to be a wolf, every woman wants to be wolf esque, and it's been used in so many of different films. But whatever the film, the word wolf like. We recreated

some of the scenes in the Wolf of Wall Street. Um. Irrespective of the fact it was a black comedy on bad behavior and illegal behavior in trading, everyone still wants to be that wolf, right, Um, And you go back in history wolves Whenever the word wolf was used, it was used in a connotation that was probably favorable to the wolf. It was never a negative connotation, even though it might have evoked in the war, it might have

evoked thoughts of of of danger dances with wolves. There's so many movies where wolves are used in a way to conjure up thoughts. So just give you a little bit of a shiver down your spine. Well, wolves are certainly a part of the lore of Western America. You spent a lot of time in the western part of this country, including during COVID, driving around from from state to state and photographing these breath taking mostly black and white images, and wolves seemed to pop up at lots

of places along with these iconic looking humans. So there's a great deal of fun. I would imagine creating these images, not capturing something that's there. You're creating it from scratch and casting it and and and executing it. Right, Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm from Glasgow in Scotland and we've

got it. We've got an interesting history that goes back hundreds of centuries, but I think the second half of the nineteenth century in America, it's the greatest story ever told, and that is why it's got a film genre also himself. That's why Westerns are Westerns, because there is so much material and it is a story book that's played out

against the grandeur of your extraordinary, blessed country. From a geological perspective, I've no doubt in my mind that America is, from a visual perspective, the most blessed country in the world.

The problem is it's over photographed. But if you can couple the grandeur of Monument Valley or the architectural beauty of Chicago, or the just the ridiculously unhinged final Frontier towns in Montana, and then you can couple that with character rich storyboard, because the seventies, eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties had every kind of character, and you throw them into that melting pot with the canvases in the background, you can't fail. The only thing is that we want to

do in winter. There's always something used. The word viscero or earlier on there's something about the snow that if I have to photograph Colorado, do a photograph Colorado in winter or summer winter ifing why I mean winter, summer, winter, Utah winter, summer winter. Every time I go winter and it works. But it does mean that we do find ourselves stuck up a man's and in minus thirty degrees with very famous supermodels wondering where they're going to spend

the night. But that's all part of that's so part of the of the charm of what we do. Yeah, well, you've done whole books on the most remote, in some ways uncomfortable places on Earth because you seem to find great beauty in that kind of discomfort, great great profundity, and and being off the beaten path and and away from creature comforts and and looking for those those pictures

that capture something moody danger. I mean, you know, you don't seem to seek out the bright sunlight and the perfectly blue sky and all those kinds of the settings for the picture. Oh no, you don't want you don't want good weather, you want bad weather. But it's it's kind of here because why, I think it just adds to the extra dimension you know when when people wake up in the morning and they pulled the curtains and this blue sky and you go, what a beautiful day

to take pictures. I'm going, No, what a dreadful day to say pictures. You wanted to be? You wanted to be Green Bay in the playoffs in January, That's that's what I want. I went up to I've covered a game up there in the playoffs, and I wanted it to be so cold and blowing snowing. And I was on the pitch. Wasn't there a game, a famous game

out there? And they called it something the ice storm? Yeah, And so I was looking at the temperature and it was like minus fifteen and everyone's going, great, it's only minus fifteen. I thought, no, no, come on, I wanted to be minus twenty Saturday. Wasn't you want to be able to capture the breath coming out of the players? Know? Well? There was just a football game played here, Michigan Ohio

state famous rivalry. And I think that the word that came to mind as had as watching it was was cinematic, not just because the storylines played out that way, because the snow was falling and it was just every every frame of it was was dramatic and that that comes through and lots of your pictures. We are photographed Russell Wilson in Montana in the summer and uh we shot in the middle of the night. He's very game and I said, I said, Russell, you hope you don't mind

getting wet. And he looked up in the sky and he said, David, don't understand, I can't see a cloud in the sky. I went, no, no, no. We brought the rain and then this truck arrived and he was very game. You got absolutely. So You've got lots of famous friends, including uh football players in sports here, Tom Brady's a friend. You You photographed these guys who who seemed to be pretty game to be thrown into these situations and and play along and have fun with it.

I think I did a podcast with with Um someone you'll know Tim, with Tim Ferris and about a year and a half ago, Um, and we're talking about fame and you know a lot of famous people, and I think fame is just an amplifier. And I'm borrowing from Chris. If someone's a good person and then they become very good at what they do, and they become famous. I think they'll continue to be a good person, just maybe an even better person because they're coping with their fame.

If someone is a bit of an arsehole, it probably can go the other way as well. Um in my experience, and my experience is small versus yours, the stars that I've dealt with have been so likable and charming. It's the it's the entourage, one layer underneath you're going to be careful about. They are the ones that I get a little bit of the jittives. But once you've got over the entourage, I find out a walk in the park. It's just the entourage that sometimes I have my moments with. Yes,

I can relate to that. I know exactly what you're saying. Well, you've doubt with with with supermodels. I mean sometimes your pictures seemed to merge the areas of wildlife and fashion photography. I guess there there are similarities. They're there things they have in common. But but you've worked with Cindy Crawford a lot and trying to recreate some some iconic things, and and how has that been with her sort of decades later trying to to create a still photograph that

recalls a TV commercial. I think we all remember it. You'll remember from the Super Bowl at ninety two. I think the tough thing for me is that we're the same age, and when she shot that in nine, we were the same age, and now we looked fifteen years apart. She has an age at all. Um, No, it's um. If you asked my team, my team have had the pleasure of working with all sorts of people over the last four or five years, in all walks of life.

And if you asked my team to put it on a piece of paper, right down their favorite person, unbeknown to each of them, that all say Cindy Crawford. Um. She's She's she's true, she's professional, she's kind, she's not affected. She'll go to the most marginal person in the room and speak to them if they she feels are disenfranchised. Uh. And I had the pleasure of spending a few days with her. We went up to Madison when the Badgers play,

and of course that's where um. She's given so much for her philanthropic efforts took towards UM and I actually went to a Badger's game. It was extraordinarius. The only time in my life because I'm used to British football. We're in a British football. If your team is doing badly, the crowd diminishes after halftime because people want to go, whereas the game I went to, the crowd builds up after halftime because everyone's getting drunk in the pubs beforehand

before they get the game. UM. We raised with her in one weekend two point six million dollars with one picture and which is a testimony to her or not me. Uh. And we did events in Madison and in Chicago and she was brilliant. It was great fun to do that. It's a second or third time we've collaborated and we get She's very easy to to to work with UM and we have a lot of fun together and she's the total pro. So now it's very humbling when you work, you know, in your job, when you've got a big

thing to commentate on. UM, it's good because it keeps you on your toes. You you want to be the best you can be, and if you're commentating on a men's final, Wimbledon or whatever, you want to be your very best. And with Cindy, I want to be the very best of what I do. Yeah. I perfectly said, glad you get to experience US college football in Madison, because that's one of the crazier, better atmospheres you can have, and and it's enough fun place. Yeah, in the best

possible way. Yeah. I encourage people for who come from the UK or anywhere, but that's a that's a global football slash soccer fan to to experience college football because it's the closest thing you have in this country to that kind of uh, that kind of celebratory atmosphere. David

enjoys spectacle and has a real sense of drama. We talked about how it doesn't just take pictures but also makes them pictures that come from ideas that he says are creative but also have to sell, and they would include a story setting, a cast of humans and animals. His latest work is called Catwalk, and it's an extraordinary, one of a kind picture plays on the idea of

a Paris fashion show. In this case, it's a beautiful lion on a catwalk and the audience or a hundred or so proud Zulu tribes people in South Africa whom David paid and were photographed separately from the lion to create some safety. The picture has a wonderful sense of harmony and celebration of lions, and you can see it again on David Yarrow dot photography. David often borrows concepts or some of his heroes, film directors and their storytelling talents.

If you're a photographer, as opposed to a filmmaker, you have to tell a story in two d and fifty for the second. Um, if you look at the great American artist Norman Rockwell, he would tell a story in one painting. If you're a filmmaker, and as such, enormous respect for just about every filmmaker. They've got a far

tougher job than us. The only time that where our job is a little bit challenging is we've got to tell it all in that one single frame, which makes it very difficult because you've got that means you've got to make that frame sweat. When we're doing the Wolf of Wall Street series, um, I was thinking all the time, how would score case Well, I knew because I've watched

the film so many times. But when we finished our we got that final picture in the Wolf of Wall Street, which was embodying the same principles as Catwalk um, I've scored case signed it, and which is a great thrill for me that he he actually thought, that's not a bad still of what I was trying to do. Albeit we put a wolf in there. And Jordan belvil I love the phrase, what does it mean to you make

the frame sweat? You've got to you know, if you look at your computer screen, you've got to make every inch of that computer screen sweat. If you look at the game, the sport that you watched the most of in in in terms of tennis, the best tennis players you commentate on, they put the ball into every single corner of that the corners of the court, right on the tram lines in the middle when they need to, but they make that whole court sweat for their opponent.

It's the same with the photograph. You've got to make it work, every part of it work for you. Yeah, the word world is drowning in images because of the iPhone cameras that probably have been more images taken of some sort um in the last five years and an entire human history before it. I would say easily with that kind of oversaturation, to grab attention, to hold it has to be really challenging. I don't think um enough photographers think about that um and I think that's absolutely right.

So to grab someone's attention, as you say, hold it is more and more of a challenge. I think the mistake that photographers may, including myself, is to think that they can take a huge number of pictures a year that the world needs to see. My My goal, and I've I've always sent this on record, is if I can take five good pictures a year, that's a good

year for me. The way that I look at a good picture is if your house went on far and that picture was destroyed with the file and it was nowhere else with the house, would you how many how many days would you think about the fact you'll never have that picture again with you? And the five pictures? If those five pictures that were destroyed with the far for this year, I'm not sure I could take any of them again. A good picture has a couple of things within it. Number One, it should be looked out,

can be looked at for a long time. Number Two, it can never be taken again. And that's an important way of looking things. If if you're a good picture is a picture of um um Chicago going down the river at sunset and you're proud of it. You can go back there. It's still that it was, still will be always the architectural city of the world. You can still go back and take that picture if you've got a pictures I might have had this year of something

of six bison charging towards me through the snow. It's never. Don't think I'm going ever going to get that again. I could try, but I really don't think I'm going to get that again. So less is more most of the time, Chris, I take pulp. I take mediocre, average, nonsense that the world doesn't need to see. So the world doesn't see because it's just really really average, and that's fine. I think it's it's you always know I

don't really fish that much. I don't when you fish, but you always know if you're with a good fisherman. If he comes back and says, I I had a great day. I got a couple, but they weren't huge. I just put them back in, But what a lovely day. You know that's a real proper fisherman. Whereas if there's the guy that bringing back the little fish that can't really feed too many, you're thinking he may be a

bit of a junior fisherman. So it's okay. You can have a good day even though you don't take a special picture because because you're out there on the job and sort of enjoying it in present, or you gotta have something special for you to feel great about. I think you can have two. You can have two different reactions. You can you can come back at the end of the day and say there was nothing there for me to take in, like in Alaska with bears. In Alaska we did We did five days back to back, um

and we know what we're doing up there. Every day we came back to the lodge and we said, well it was a ship day. We're down twenty and should day. But you know what, we didn't miss anything. It's when you miss something through your own poor execution that's that's upsetting. And the final day there was something happened, Something was there and we got it. What you don't want to do is be presented with the the opportunity and miss

it and that happens. That of course, that happens. I had a had a chausse said, there's this a very big bear that I've always wanted to photograph. He's huge, and I had my remote control down on the ground, and lo and behold, he came right towards walking right towards the remote control, and I'm my focal plane is about four foot in front of the camera and about five ft in front of the camera. For whatever reason,

he stopped or lost momentum. And then when I had a ship in the woods and but my camera, I still pressed the trigger when the lat because I've got the motive, I've got the remote control um. But it was just maybe half a second before where my vocal plane was. And I went all the way back from Anchorage to Los Angeles looking at this picture on my computer and going, I think I may have got it. I think I may have got it. Maybe I've got it to convince myself that I hadn't, that it wasn't

really bad luck. And then when we went to the studio the next day in l A and it's printed the size of a pool table as mine are, and I just went, God, I haven't got it, because that's when you find out whether it's sharp or not. It's gonna be pin sharp, and it just wasn't. And you have moments like that of course you did is you're a great market for for a picture of a bear taking a ship. It was always that that have been a nice You'd be surprised with what people people want

to bind it. And what I respect about you, David is you are so damn hard on yourself and you have a high bar. It doesn't matter if your pictures are praised by others. You want to meet your own standard. And you you constantly believe not only that you can improve, but that you must improve, that that's imperative to be better this year than last. And and you're in your fifties now and you feel like you're you're the best

photographer you've been. And I admire that. I can relate to that somewhat in that quest to not settle, to be tough on yourself. And I always feel like you must improve. And I really respect that because a lot of guys who have done what you've done, whatever the field is, but particularly photography, would sit back on their ass and just and and and mail it in. I think, I think, um, yeah, it goes right to your heart of your personality. Um imagine starting January the one. And

I learned this from some of my mentors. You start on January, the one you wake up with a hangover and you go, this year, we're gonna do this lightly less. Well, well, that's not a really particularly good way to start January, the first to go this year we're gonna do It's like, you know, aging is a fairly miserable process. Um, there's so many things you become less good at. Um. But

you should become a better photographer because photographer. Photography is about emotional intelligence, and you do become more I think, more emotionally intelligent. You get older, so long as you don't become, you know, like a really old fart. But you should. You should because it's the summation of the aggregation of everything you've learned. Um. And I'm slightly more

confident now than I used to be. I went for a meeting with FIFA and the other day injured, and the the FIFA guy said, so, how would you like to photograph Messy? And my first reaction was to say, we'll certainly not on a football itch, to which he replied, I'm so pleased you said that. And I think maybe ten years ago I might have said, well for him playing for Argentina or prison as your main or Barcelona

or whatever. Whereas now I want to photograph him coming over the hills of Patagonia with some goats, because he's the greatest of all time. So that's how I want to photograph Messy. I don't want to photograph him in his normal environment. That's not good. An awful lot to do with photography. I think that's got enough what to do with more your creative processing and trying to assess what is going to capture people's emotions. Yeah, it's great

to have that sense of intellectual maturity. As you said that, there's because there's a great physicality to your work. I mean literally, it's a physical experience. Is demanding. The pictures have a physicality, two of them. At times you had to be fearless slash borderline reckless, depending on the definition of it. I don't know that that's still done as much now, but you still have the appetite for that, for putting yourself and your gear and harm's way when needed,

because the intensity of the experiences is that seductive. I think on some I had a I had a bad experience with killer whales up in Norway Orcas, and because if you're going to photograph an Orca, you want to photograph them. Photographing anything on the sea, you want to be as close to sea level as possible. Um. And there is a big difference between photographing from three food

above sea level to sea level. So the only way really to photograph orcas I felt, was to be at sea level, and the way to do that is to be on a raft. So I was on a raft being total along by bigger boat in Siberia, and I didn't have a wet suit on. I just had the ski clothes on. And I got the picture of the worka it's cold actually on the website's called the Killers and it's a it's a favorite picture of mine. Um. And I was so bloody excited and also so cold.

I tried to get back into the boat from the raft quicker than my instructions were at the time, and the raft tipped and I fell into the ocean with my camera here um and um, it's quite cold up there. So they took me to the hospital with um, you know, in case you get hypothermia. And there was this rather attractive Russian nurse who asked me to take all my clothes off and actually actually my penis had disappeared, it had inverted into my body, and it was one of

my more embarrassing moments in my life. She said to the whale, says, and I said, well, it wouldn't have fed him for that long. That wasn't where I thought the story was going, because if it, if I thought it, I would probably got another direction. When you start out, it's not a sentence I've ever actually heard before. I had a bad experience with the killer whales in Norway. That's that's the story sentence I've never actually heard. And then your your description is certainly a place I didn't

expect it to go. I don't even know where we can leave it with that. That sounds kind of a mic drop because it's it's tough to end something like this about a great time without without being trite. But is there a is there a thing that you can conceive, David, a picture that you can imagine planning and plotting and executing where you would just sort of drop the camera

and go, that's it. If I can't do better than that, that's that's the last achievement, and just make it like a walk off image or because you can do this for years if you want to. I had, I had. I wanted to demystify Kim Young of North Korea. So I went to North Korea with the idea that I, as a Westerner, could take a portrait of him, of the supreme leader that would demystify his personality, and I

gave him my very best shot. I spent a week there and then they wanted me to do teach them photography lessons and stuff, so I pulled out the end. So that was one that got away. I mean, at the top of my wish you couldn't get it, or you just didn't like the vibe, and I just worried

that I worried. I quite like them. Actually, I just worried that, um, I could spend another two weeks there and then they turned around and say no. But they did ask me how I wanted to photograph him, and there I thought they had more of a sense of humor. So I said, why I can't I tell him sitting on a rocket and there was silence, but four they then laughed and said, you're making You're being funny, and I said, yeah, I wouldn't worry. I wouldn't do that, but I would love to one of my heroes is

Willie Nelson. Uh and Um, Willie has been obviously locked up a little bit in luck in Texas because of COVID H. I would love to photograph him. I would love to photograph him in a way, in my kind of way, with some badass people. He's got. He knows plenty of badass people, but that would be that would

be a bit of a girl of mine. Um. And Uh, you're you're almost going to get better, you know you you you look at your extraordinary career and you've photo You've watched some of the best tennis matches that anyone could ever watched with three extraordinary male tennis players over the last twenty years. And every time you've seen one, you've gone, my goodness, I'll never see a better game.

And then probably you've got another one that that was actually better than than the doll federal one that I thought would never be decent. Um. So you can always always hope to get something more. Uh, challenge yourself, get more creative. And I am I'm a storyteller, so I there's so many stories that are being told. Every time that I see a new great movie, I go, that's amazing. And they didn't even think about it three years ago,

and look what they've just produced. So I'm I'm full of optimism that there's so many things around the corner. So grateful to David for his time, for his work, and for what he does through his work. Since two thousand and eighteen, David has raised more than six million dollars for humanitarian and conservation organizations. His next adventure back to Antarctica, try to get the picture he couldn't get on his last visit, which lasted only forty five minute

because of new COVID regulations. The quest for five Good Pictures a year begins anew in two. That's also when season four of our podcast will begin. I want to thank all of our guests who made season three so much fun, and thank you for your growing support. Grateful as always to co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and Adjason whitehealf Is Edny Skills. We want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season and a healthy, fulfilling and happy new Year. We'll talk to you so