From TNC Magazine: Photographer Kiliii Yuyan almost lost all of his belongings while treading through waist-deep mud to capture the diversity of wildlife at Elkhorn Slough for a story in Nature Conservancy magazine.
The challenging shoot and Yuyan’s positive attitude were ultimately rewarded with incredible photographs of the estuary’s teeming wildlife—including seals, sea otters, and Caspian terns.
Feature Shoot showcases the work of international emerging and established photographers who are transforming the medium through compelling, cutting-edge projects. I’m excited they are featuring my project, Living Wild.
Kiliii Yuyan lives a life less ordinary. As a native Russian descendent of “the salmon people who live along the Amur river in Siberia”, yet raised in America, Yuyan grew up chasing the traditions of his culture and seeking an answer to the question: “can a modern person learn to see the world through native eyes?”
Every spring for the last 4000 years, the Iñupiat people have stood on the tuvaq, the edge of the shorefast ice, waiting for the annual migration of bowhead whales. The whaling season has begun.
Bowhead whales were once thought to be a threatened species due to excessive international whaling in the 1800s. However, by the 1980s, Iñupiat whalers had proven that their own understanding of the bowhead whale population was far more accurate than scientists once believed. Today, Iñupiat communities manage hunting quotas of bowhead whales themselves. Unlike whaling in much of the world, the subsistence practices of the Iñupiat people maintain the bowhead whale as an unthreatened species — just as they have done for thousands of years.
Bowhead whaling is a cultural cornerstone of Iñupiat identity and a primary source of food on the Arctic Slope, where the cost of living is nearly three times that of mainland US. In spring of 2016, I spent 5 weeks standing on the sea ice as a guest of a whaling crew. As an indigenous person, I wanted to understand and document their subsistence life in the Arctic, where the danger of cultural death is just as imminent as an attack from a polar bear.
This video is a set of impressions of the stark and beautiful world on the sea ice. My crew stands on the ice next to our skinboat. We wait for the return of the bowhead whales, and give thanks to the gift of the whale for feeding an entire community. We watch, day and night, as starving polar bears try to catch us unawares, and the ice melts under our feet.
Last month, DPReview.com, the camera review site teamed up with me and Canon to shoot an extreme camera test. The crew followed me as I worked on the story of Barrow, Alaska, an Inupiat village on the North Slope of Alaska. There I spent time covering the story of indigenous whaling and the tragedy of climate change in the Arctic.
I just had the pleasure of speaking with Ibarionex Perello, host of the Candid Frame podcast and a well known-street photographer. Ibarionex and I were recently co-presenters at the photo expo PIX2015. I’m excited to be on the show since I’ve been a long time fan of the Candid Frame, which is really the best podcast on photography out there– it focuses on the art and process of photography rather than gear and technique.
We talked primarily about the Living Wild project, my long-term project on modern hunter-gatherer practitioners, as well as bit about my background growing up as a Native/Chinese kid and learning self-reliance. You can play/download it directly here.
A rare lightning storm over recent lava flows on Hawaii
Folks, I’m humbled to announce that Communication Arts has chosen my lightning image from the Pahoehoe Lava flows in Hawaii for their 2015 Photo Annual. If you’re a subscriber to CommArts, here’s a link to the Photo Annual.
Many thanks to my partner stock agency Aurora Photos and Larry Westler for submitting the image and for their enthusiasm at supporting my adventures everywhere!
While on assignment in Iceland last October-November, I took the time to shoot some footage of the bleak yet beautiful landscapes of the arctic. Being here in the autumn is taxing physically– the climate vacillates around freezing but the rain/sleet is constant and the wind whips across this treeless land at 25mph without a break.
Nonetheless, I hope you get a feeling for the starkness of the treeless tundra, a land of arctic foxes and lichens, volcanoes and the dancing of the Aurora.
Remember to click HD on the video to see it in HD!
Au Magazine is Aurora Photo‘s quarterly publication, an amazing collection of shots by the best in adventure and stock photography. This quarter I’m humbled to be among the featured photographers alongside some amazing talents, covering combat photography to fine art. I’m also sad to say goodbye to longtime Aurora Director of Photography Peter Dennen, who has with this final issue moved into photo consulting with Pedro+Jackie.
Native artist Louie Gong, who runs 8thgen, was featured on the cover of Native Peoples this month. We did this shoot a year ago and Louie still looks good, with his hybrid street art/nw coast/asian style on a skateboard deck. I still don’t have a copy yet so here’s what Louie texted me.
