Conservation Photography

Conservation photography is a vision of photography that has a long history with a new purpose. A conservation photographer's work begins once they click the shutter. It's what you do with these images that matters as it takes you into the active role of affecting conservation for the natural world.

Conservation Photography Workshop
An Introduction to Your DSLR
Gary Sharlow
Photographer, Education Manager

Sunday, June 16th 1:00-4:00 pm
In this three-hour classroom presentation, you will learn about the inner workings of your DSLR camera. This class is designed as an overview to help you take better understand your camera, digital darkroom and opportunities to tell conservation stories with your images or impact conservation in other ways. You will learn the fundamentals of proper focus, exposure and depth of field and we will touch on composition and basic techniques as well. We will touch on basic features of the DSLR camera with topics to include lens and filter choices, ISO, white balance, shutter, aperture and program modes, EV, exposure, bracketing, focusing, resolution, histograms etc. We will also touch on the use of Adobe Lightroom to manage your digital workflow.

Please Note: Entry for this program is at the back of the building at the Business Reception Desk and we will meet there at 12:45pm.

Reservations: Members: $40, General $50 Seating is limited and advanced ticketing is required. To reserve a place today, buy a Member or Non-Member ticket online or over the phone at 1-877-227-1831

In Partnership With The San Francisco Public Library
Whales: Up Close and Personal
Bryant Austin
Conservation Photographer

Wednesday, May 22 at 6:00pm, SF Main Library
Conservation photographer Bryant Austin is the only photographer in the world producing high-resolution, life-size photography of whales. A chance encounter with a humpback calf and its mother helped Austin develop a technique to create detailed, intimate portraits of his subjects. Spending days at a time submerged with groups of whales, he remains motionless, allowing humpback, sperm, and minke whales that are sometimes forty-five feet in length and weigh as much as fifty tons to come within six feet. In this presentation, Austin will describe his fearless process and reveal images from his breathtaking new book, Beautiful Whale, which will be published in April 2013 by Abrams. Hear the story behind these impactful images that inspire people to take the future of whales-endangered throughout the oceans-into their hearts. Book signing to follow.

Reservations: This is a free event being held at the main branch of the SFPL. Seating is limited and advanced ticketing is strongly encouraged. Reserve a seat online or over the phone at 1-877-227-1831

Photo Competition

The LoveLife photo competition is back! Submit your loveliest photos of the California Academy of Sciences and the natural world for judging by a team of Academy insiders. Vote to nominate your favorite photos online for the People’s Choice Award. Prizes include a $100 gift card, Academy Behind-the-Scenes tours and more! Visit the LoveLife photo exhibit in the Academy Children’s Gallery to see past winners.

Learn More

Our Real World Meetup Community

Consider this your invitation to join our virtual community that can serve as way for all of us to stay in touch as a photography community. If you who are new to Meetup, they describe their service as such: “Meetup.com helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world.” We would love to have you join our group and spread the word to fellow photographers. We can use this platform to announce free real world gatherings to grow our community and plan times to get together with new friends that you may have made through the Academy photography workshops. Speaking of workshops, we’ll also announce upcoming Academy workshops through the service as well as on the Academy site. We hope you will join the group and spread the word so we can grow our community.

Please visit us online so we can make plans to get together in the real world!

Conservation Photography Flickr Pool

The second most requested thing from our workshop participants, beyond ways to continue to get together in person, has been for ways to post the images taken in our workshops to an online site where we could offer each other feedback on our images and technique. This can also be used to open up topics of conversation about anything photography related. We hope you will consider posting some of the images you took through our workshops, and we look forward to seeing more of your nature related photography through this group. A bonus of contributing to the flickr pool is that they joined forces with Getty images giving you a professional service from which to sell your images. If you’re good, they will find you!

Check Out & Join Our Flickr Pool

iNaturalist Identification Database

From the inventors of the inaturalist.org website: "From hikers to hunters, birders to beach-combers, the world is filled with naturalists, and many of us record what we find. What if all those observations could be shared online? You might discover someone who finds beautiful wildflowers at your favorite birding spot, or learn about the birds you see on the way to work. If enough people recorded their observations, it would be like a living record of life on Earth that scientists and land managers could use to monitor changes in biodiversity, and that anyone could use to learn more about nature. That's the vision behind iNaturalist.org. So if you like recording your findings from the outdoors, or if you just like learning about life, join us! "

Please visit our "project" page to join the effort to explore, explain and protect the natural world.