PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 101 photography: patience. Waiting for hours to capture the right moment isn’t a chore for her. “The more time you spend in the field, the better the images you are able to get,” Susan explains. “A lot of the best images are going to happen within a heartbeat. The more you understand animal behavior, the more you can predict when those things might happen and be ready for it.” What does Susan hope to elicit with these glimpses into the wild life? “To try to give people a sense of connection, empathy, respect, awe for these incredible animals, whether it is a dung beetle or a leopard, a red-eyed tree frog or an elephant,” she shares. “Stephen J. Gould, I think said it best … ‘We will not fight to save what we do not love.’” A NEW LENS ON LIFE Susan didn’t always aspire to be a photographer. It took a trip to the high Arctic for her to fully warm up to the idea. “I was really ambivalent about having the box—the camera—in front of my face, and whether that was distancing me from the experience or bringing me into the experience,” she recalls. While on a voyage to Svalbard 20 years ago, Susan spotted polar bears jumping from ice flow to ice flow. Joining other photographers on the deck with her recently bought digital camera, she started snapping away—and couldn’t seem to stop. That day, Susan discovered there was an art to timing the shot, to pressing the shutter down just as the polar bear rocked back her weight and made the leap. “My lens kept fogging up and my fingers were so numb from cold that I couldn't actually feel the shutter button anymore. And despite all of that, there was this moment where I just had this epiphany: That I have never been happier in my entire life,” she recalls. Since then, Susan’s images have been used by National Geographic (in the magazine, books ABOVE: (left to right) A Galapagos sea lion enjoys a quiet moment; a lined day gecko finds the perfect hiding place in Madagascar.
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