I’m no longer posting here at The Wild Beat, but I’ll be picking up soon where I left off, at my main website:

ingridtaylar.com

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PHOTOGRAPHIC ROOTS 

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I’ve had a camera in my hands since my first Kodak Instamatic 124 in grade school, a gift from my parents to shoot snippets of my expat life. I’ve also had an enduring love for animals, nature and ecology. But, it wasn’t until I volunteered at wildlife hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area that my passion for photography merged with my environmental advocacy. Working in wildlife rehabilitation gave me an intimate view into the lives and struggles of species so often inaccessible and removed from our own.

I do my best to paint my experience and theirs in pixels … that heart-stopping moment when ten thousand Snow Geese take flight overhead … when an old elk bugles under the season’s first snow drops … when a pod of Orcas glides past the boat, sharing the pulse of the ocean.  Through the intimacy of my lens, I hope to promote love and appreciation for our fellow beings, their lives interwoven with our own.

Animals are, indeed, our “fellow prisoners of splendor,” as Henry Beston once wrote. They, above all, suffer for our ignorance. I believe that every eye, every heart, every lens turned toward their well-being helps build a model of compassionate co-existence that will someday be our norm, not our anomaly.  

You can read more the inspiration behind my camera in an interview with Empirical Magazine.

CREDITS

Photography: 

• My work appears in publications, exhibits, and installations that include: 

– Bay Nature • Via Magazine (AAA) • San Francisco Chronicle • Getty Images • Scottish Wildlife Trust • Bluebird Journal •  Visual Arts Collective. 

– Featured cover photos include U.S. Fish and Wildlife Magazine • Penguin Publishing’s “Morning Glory” • Puget Sound Partnership’s “State of the Sound.” (A more complete list of credits is here: Published Images.)

Writing + Research

• I’m an independent researcher for authors James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, credited in 16 books and four book series.

• Until 2009, I worked at About.com as city editor for the San Francisco website, covering civic and cultural issues and events.

Wildlife Advocacy

• I’ve been certified as a California state wildlife rehabilitator, completed 24-hour Hazwoper training for oil spill response, received certification in Wildlife Emergency Response training for field rescue, and trained as a volunteer for Emergency Animal Rescue Service, a domestic animal rescue for disaster mobilization. 

• In 2014 I co-founded the Wildlife Conservation Pass Project with my colleague Larry Jordan, of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Network — a grassroots effort to implement a new non-hunters’ revenue pass for our National Wildlife Refuge system. 

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY ETHICS

The well-being of the animals is more important to me than any image, so I work to minimize my disturbance when I’m in the field. That principle guides my photography. 

I don’t bait wild animals or use calls. I’m also careful about nest photos, and avoid photographing anywhere I might compromise the welfare or safety of the animals. I use the North American Nature Photography guidelines as a baseline. 

NATURAL LIGHT

All of my images are shot in natural light, no flash or artificial illumination. I enjoy and feel challenged by working with the nuances of available light. And, because I appreciate photographs as emotive and story-telling devices, I see the technical imperfection of in shooting difficult light — darkness, fog, and high-contrast situations — as a call to adapt and find something new in the frame.

MY GEAR

• Cameras: Olympus OM-D cameras (E-M1 and E-M5)

• Lenses: Zuiko/m.zuiko lenses (50-200mm, 75-300mm, 40-150mm, 300mm).

• Post Processing: Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, as well Nik Software.

For fine art images and prints, I do take creative license with effect and outcome (and will note that distinction). In naturalistic or documentary photography, I make standard edits on RAW files which include exposure, sharpness, contrast and so forth. 

Enjoy your browsings and drop me an email if you have any comments or need more information. Thanks for stopping by!

~ Ingrid Taylar

PHOTOS + USAGE/LICENSING

For all uses or permissions of images posted here, please feel free to contact me for the specs. I keep a limited selection of Creative Commons images on Flickr for public use in educational, editorial and non-commercial contexts. 

Photos, writings, and graphics © Ingrid Taylar

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 Photographing seabirds in Cannon Beach, Oregon

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Feeding a baby raccoon at the wildlife hospital

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Keeping it all in perspective … our tiny place in the grand scheme of things (photographing at Los Vaqueros Reservoir in California)

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