I wanted to know who the most extreme wildlife photographer is. All that took was asking google who the most extreme wildlife photographer is. The instant gratification from the internet. Of course, while this didn't give me an official list or power rankings, it did show a name that kept coming up in the hits.

That name is Jim Oltersdorf. http://www.joltersdorf.com/

I first clicked on an article about him and his technique for such dangerous work at http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/shooting/extreme-wildlife.html (a website that will go in my bookmarks), and then found his own website.

He's been doing this work for a long time, as well as being a bush pilot. He lives in Alaska, where he says he sees around 25-35 grizzly bears A DAY during the summers. Needless to say he has some great shots of these bears. He gets steady work on magazines, instructs courses and now works with video and even has his own production company.

His work is without a doubt impressive, but I think I'm more interested in the life/ career hes been able to make with photography.

Alright, I found this photographer in a similar way I did the last one; He did work in video that I'm familiar with. I first read about a documentary called The Last of the Great Unknown in BackPacker magazine two years ago, immediately looked up the website, and watched the trailer more than 20 times, I'm sure, waiting to see if it would ever be released. I finally got to see it at a showing of the touring Telluride Mountain Film Festival when it came through St. Louis last winter. The shots these guys got in the Grand Canyon slots are incredible. The only thing disappointing was the length of the film. You can find the preview for the doc here. http://www.lastofthegreatunknown.com/

Anyways, I remembered that they did a lot of the shooting with DSLRs since the remote places they were trying to get to required the lightest most compact gear, so I was pretty sure some of the crew were more photographers than videographers. And I was right.

The guy's name is Dan Ransom. Hes a professional photographer and canyoneer from Salt Lake City, Utah. Canyoneering is sort of a very specific offshoot of hiking, belaying and rock climbing. They explore deep, remote canyons, using those skills, among others, to get there. A lot of these places have never been seen before. One really interesting thing about Dan, is that the photography comes first. He is more interested in getting to beautiful places, he says. The climbing, belaying and hiking are just a means to the end for him. It is the destination, not the journey, in his mind. I really like this outlook, because in the world we live in today, everyone is taking pictures everyday. We're running out of things to shoot that haven't been shot before, so to find those things, you have to work for them. He does that, and the pay off is not just getting the shots no one has gotten before him, but getting shots of things no one has even seen before him. I imagine that has to be the best feeling for a photographer.

I think anyone will appreciate checking out his work here. http://www.danransom.com/portfolio/

The Portugal! The Man Video I posted last week made for the perfect jumping off point for discovering new photographers. The idea is pretty obvious in hindsight, but it just took a quick Google search to find out who the director of the video was, and it turns out he is more of a photographer than a director.

The man is David Vincent Wolf.

davidvincentwolf.com

From what I can gather, he is either an up-and coming artist, or just a modest professional. There isn't much info on the web about him. The most I could discover about him came from his own website, and a couple professional social websites he is a member of. Its easy to tell that even if he does have little notoriety, he still does well for himself as a professional.  He lives in Los Angeles, California and seems to pull in a fair amount of work. While Portugal! The Man isn't the most famous band, that video is sure to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even a million. (404,575 at the time of this entry). Not to mention he has recently done work for a few little known companies, Microsoft, Vans, and Boeing. I'm sure a few people have heard of them. It would be pretty neat to see him blow up a little bit, now that I'll have my eyes trained on the photography world. Then again, maybe he is well known and even famous, and I'm just unaware.

I would guess this is his most recognizable work.

Other than the commissioned work on his site, his stuff seems pretty personal. A lot of shots of people he seems to know, and a good amount of what seems to be his wife, and possibly kid(s). Those are just my assumptions of course though.  Then there are a lot of shots from neighborhoods and places around Los Angeles. These were all pretty simple shots but they're the ones that stood out the most to me. It seems like he has a lot of noise/ gain in his stuff, which could come across as poor work to some, maybe, but I took it as more of his personal style and it resonated with me. I'll definitely be checking back to his page to see more work in the future.

I'll throw up a couple more pictures that struck me.