It’s been a while, but I’m back with my quick thoughts on National Geographic Magazine for the past two months. April’s issue introduced “The Photo Ark” and May’s issue was a special issue focused entirely on Yellowstone National Park, our nation’s oldest National Park.
April: The highlight for me in April’s issue was by far the Photo Ark. I was impressed, actually, by the article and the pictures. The cover calls the photo ark “one man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time.” What fascinated me in the article was the backstory of how the photographer, Joel Sartore, started the project in the first place. Essentially, he had been traveling the world photographing all sorts of things for his career when in 2005 his wife was diagnosed with cancer. As a result, he spent the next year at home – the article says he “had no choice” but to stay home and give up the traveling, but there’s always a choice. Sartore made the respectable and admirable choice to stay home and care for his wife and three children, sacrificing his career goals for that year. As a woman who has relied on her husband through several years of cycling illnesses, I know this is no small step for a man to take and I have a profound respect for spouses who give like my husband has given to me – with true love and devotion. In any case, I guess what I’m getting at is that I like Sartore’s work even more knowing his story. Which is that he hatched the idea for the photo ark during that year at home – his first photo for the project was of the naked mole rat, which he photographed at a zoo near his home. He found a way to pursue his work AND be there for his family, which is pretty awesome. His goal for the photo ark is also admirable: “photographing the world’s captive species and making people care about their fate.” It seems like he has a good shot at achieving that goal – his photo spread in April’s issue is my two-year-old’s favorite page of the magazine 🙂
May: I feel like I should have a lot to say about May’s Yellowstone issue, but I don’t. I learned SO much from it, and I found it really fascinating. That said, what stands out to me the most after having read it is this photo from one of the last pages of the magazine by Louise Johns:
The caption reads:
Four-year-old Elle Anderson chases a ball and a future near her family’s house on J Bar L Ranch in Montana. ‘A hundred years from now,’ says Hillary Anderson, ‘I hope this place is a thriving ecosystem full of everything that should be here – wolves, bears, humans, livestock.’
You can see the picture a lot better if you click here. What I love about it: the scene pictured here is drastically different from where I live in a townhouse neighborhood in suburban Virginia. But, in true four-year-old fashion, Elle Anderson is chasing that ball wearing…an Elsa dress. No matter how different their day to day lives may be, this four-year-old and my four-year-old are a lot alike 🙂
Kristin Houlihan, Writer 
