Embracing the Call of the Wild with Matthias Breiter

Transcript

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Welcome to no Wrong Choices, the podcast that explores the career journeys of accomplished and inspiring people to uncover secrets of success.

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I'm Larry Samuels, soon to be joined by the other fellas, tushar Saxena and Larry Shea.

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This episode features the author, photographer and cinematographer, matthias Breiter, who is considered one of the world's greatest authorities on bears.

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Larry Shea is the person who found him in the woods of Alaska.

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I think you're the right person to set up this conversation for us Not quite in the woods of Alaska, but in Alaska, not in Alaska.

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I recently did a two week, two and a half week trip to Alaska.

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It was a kind of bucket list item been looking forward to it my whole life.

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I'm 51 years old now, so my legs don't work like they used to.

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It was time to go.

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I had to do it before I could no longer how you can move around, you know, reaching those ages.

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But yeah, we were waiting.

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My wife and I, Susan, were waiting in a hotel for a guided hike through Denali National Park.

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We were going to go on a hike.

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We had a guide.

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We got there very early to this particular hotel.

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My wife found a nice puzzle to put together, because that's what she likes to do, and I kind of walked around and twiddled my thumbs and I come around the corner and there's these amazing wildlife photographs all over the wall and a gentleman doing a book, signing A lot of coffee table books, like several books.

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I'm like, oh my God, did you take all these photos?

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And it was Matthias Breider, of course.

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And he says yes, and we just get to talking.

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Turns out he is the preeminent bear specialist in the world.

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Kind enough to give me his information.

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I come home and here we are we have a biologist cinematographer, author, wildlife photographer.

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I mean, how many hats can you wear?

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So, yes, super excited to share this conversation with everybody.

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It was fascinating and I think you're all going to really enjoy it.

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Now be prepared.

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When we spoke, to this man he was basically hanging off the side of a glacier trying to get three bars, because you just can't get a good signal in the entire state of Alaska.

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You have to go to extreme measures to get a signal anywhere.

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So this is what it's going to sound like from time to time.

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But look, when you can speak to the preeminent expert of anything in the world and how many times do you get in.

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How many times in your life do you get to say you know what?

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I spoke to the preeminent expert of X, y or Z ever in your life.

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No doubt.

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Absolutely so.

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It doesn't matter if he's hanging off the side of a glacier trying to find three bars.

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We're going to speak to this man and do whatever we can to do so.

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I know we had a ton of fun with this interview and I know you'll enjoy listening to it.

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Absolutely so.

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With that, here is Matias Brighter.

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Matias, thank you so much for joining us.

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Well, thank you for having me Now, Matias, before we get too far into our conversation, we always like to give our guests the opportunity to tell us who they are and what they do in their own words, rather than us making assumptions.

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So can you sort of set the stage for us and tell us a little bit about yourself?

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Well, so most people always refer to me as a photographer, a geophotographer or filmmaker, etc.

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I refer to myself as a biologist and what I do, or what I see myself as doing trying to bring nature, biological world closer to people using various media, meaning photography, cinematography, writing it really doesn't matter to me what media it is.

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I see myself more as an interpreter, as a bridge between nature and people.

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I see myself a little bit more like in a teaching position or a bridging society and nature, as there is a certain alienation that is happening between our environment and our society.

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Many bears I'm just being specialized around bears, which has just happened to my career.

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So let's begin at the beginning.

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I think it's always the best way to go.

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I know you had an interesting childhood.

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Talk about where you grew up.

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Did you have pets as a kid?

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Like, where did this start?

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Was this the dream?

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I grew up in Germany, heidelberg.

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We always lived near the forest and apparently from the earliest age on, like a three-year-old, I was running all through the woods on my own, exploring, and I think this connection to the environment was always strong and grew over the years.

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Then we didn't have a dog.

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What I had was actually exotic finches and I bred exotic finches.

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And then from early early on there was a dichotomies Like I was very interested to art.

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My grandfather was a painter, so I was always encouraged to express myself artistically.

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I was even an art prodigy for a while, painting and drawing.

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And then there was biology.

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There was this fascination for nature and classical biology, meaning I loved to be out in nature, observe animals, just spent time out there.

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I was never a city boy.

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I never really enjoyed being in a more urban environment.

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Matthias, I'm going to ask the ignorant question what is a finch?

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A finch is a small bird.

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It's a group of birds and exotic finches.

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They're like in Africa and Australia and they're very colorful.

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Some species are reasonably easy to raise, like zebra finches that you find in pet stores, and others are a little bit more exotic and I went more towards the more exotic ones that I found more interesting, and then, years later, when I actually worked in Australia on a project, birds that I used to breed at home were then in my garden, so that was for me quite an exciting thing.

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Very cool In the context.

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I live in New York City, so it's probably not a surprise that I did not know what a finch is.

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So is it safe to say that growing up you had your own zoo at your home outside of the forest?

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You had your own zoo in your home in Heidelberg.

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Well, yeah, restricted to birds, but yes, obviously right.

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All right, so then your own aviary.

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You had your own aviary in your home in Heidelberg.

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Oh yeah, I did.

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I actually had several aviaries, so it cost a bit of a problem at home because there's always some dirt involved with having any pet and we were living in an apartment and I think at the peak we probably had about 40, 50 birds.

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Oh, wow.

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Oh my.

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God.

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Oh my God.

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So basically you were just living in the apartment, sharing the apartment with the birds.

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It's really, it's really, oh yeah.

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And my siblings and my parents which had.

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My mother was very supportive, but I think my siblings were always quite as thrilled.

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I'm sure they were not.

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I have to be quite honest with you.

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Now you mentioned a moment that you were, as you said you were a classical biologist as a child, observing nature.

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Was there one kind outside of birds?

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Was there another type of animal that you observed as a child that, then, I would say, sparked your interest in other animals as you grew up, as you saw your career taking flight?

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I mean, it's probably rough to go that far, but is there something that really sparked you as a child when you would go out in nature?

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Well, less going out in nature, I think, like you would see deer, but there was no wolves and very few foxes around, no bears.

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Where I grew up, I just was fascinated like watching certain shows on TV and from pretty early on my dream was like being like a veterinarian in Africa and working on predator-prey relationships, that kind of stuff Something that wasn't really attainable in Germany at all.

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So I'm fascinated.

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We just went to like 10 places too.

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You also said you were an artistic prodigy at one point.

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Was that at that point in your life, or does that come later?

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That was in my early teens.

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One of my classmates her mother was a professor at Art College and the high school had issues getting art instructors and because she was the mother, she volunteered to be a substitute art teacher in school and she saw my work and then she drew me in.

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She took me to Art College, she took me to her courses and was really supporting me to how to well learn to properly paint, learn to properly draw.

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My parents were always supportive, but we were four kids, so there was more like a passive support or encouragement, and so this art professor then really took me under her wing and for several years I went to Art College, which was a very restricted school.

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They were like 5,000 applicants and 50 would be taken and I as a 12-year-old went there and that ended when she unfortunately was diagnosed and then passed away.

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But it was a formative period for me, just to actually learn that people are appreciating what I am creating and think it's good, like your parents always think it's good Whatever you do, your parents always think it's good.

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But to actually have from some outside Right.

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Right.

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I find that fascinating that you had both an artistic mindset and yet a scientific mindset, and I'm just curious.

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I could see how they run in parallel and they help each other, because you're studying animals and you want to draw them, take pictures of them, study the anatomy and things of that nature.

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Is that how you thought of it back then, or did they work hand in hand, or were they two separate things that were happening in your life, I guess?

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Well, at that point it was to some degree separate, and I drew a lot of things that I saw in the environment, but I wasn't really thinking about like using that as a career in that shape it was.

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I think what you Learn as an artist and maybe as a scientist, or hopefully as a scientist, is thinking outside the box.

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You're not just copying.

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You're supposed to be creative, and so, if I think that's probably where the connection comes in, as a now, as a Writer, as a photographer, as a biologist, there is a creativity that has to go in you.

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Otherwise it's just always a copy of someone else's work, and so I think that's where really then the when things kind of blend together into one profession.

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And so, at what point does the art end?

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At what point do you Walk away from the actual medium of drawing and painting and those things?

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Or have you never walked away and it just became not as much of a focal point in your career?

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well, the, the Creative art like drawing, painting basically stopped within a year of my Professor passing away from cancer.

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Really, I I did, just didn't get the support anymore.

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It wasn't.

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It is positive feedback, like I remember vividly, I did one drawing that I thought was the best I've ever done and I showed it to my grandmother and her response was why did you do it like that?

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And?

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And For me, I I just did not want to defend why I created things a certain way.

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So then the it went more than towards the biological part, and Then, like when it later on, after I finished my degree in biology, and then I was asked to write my first book and I had to illustrate it, that's really when, then, the creative part came back into it.

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It was, it wasn't really planned that way, and I didn't really think too much about photography or never thought about writing a book.

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I was just asked to write one thought actually that was going to be my next question when?

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When did the, when did the scientists officially take over and when did you find that happy medium between those two sides?

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But obviously that happened in your college years as well as to when the, the scientists took over.

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So when was that first time you finally picked up a camera?

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Well, the first time I picked up was like 18 or 19, but I didn't know what I was doing.

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It was.

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We did a vacation trip through Alaska, actually as an 18 year old, and I decided I need a camera, and I think none of the Images have any value in any shape or form nowadays.

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I didn't know what I was doing and Then photography really became well.

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It just evolved.

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Like I Was had no real formal education and photography then.

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It was still film days.

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Everything was kind of you Like.

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Very often you didn't see the result of what you were photographing until a month later.

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So there was a bit of a sure if there was a disconnect, there was a disconnect between when you took the image and when you saw it, which made the learning curve pretty slow.

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But over time, obviously and I think that where the artistic Education mindsets comes in, people really like my photography and Particularly then also very established high-end agencies, and it became much well.

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For a while then I was more known as a photographer.

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Then I got more known as a writer than more as a cinematographer.

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It's kind of Changed back and forth, for sure, and I and I don't really consider myself any of it, I just do what I do to portray the beauty of nature and try to bring it across to to people.

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Well, let's sort of head in that direction.

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So you know, you're in school, you're developing all of these different skills.

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You're an artist, your photographer, you're a biologist.

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When he came out of school I guess in advance of your first book coming out, you know what path did you take?

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How did you focus all of those talents that you were developing?

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well, it was already towards the end of my school year, so I was in grad school and you try to get a thesis going on something that interests you.

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I mean it's it's not like there are these is just lying around that are interesting.

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There's a lot of these.

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Is that that's just there?

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Because someone needs to get a degree?

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And I at that point I was at the University of Massachusetts and I didn't really want to do a lab job and the opportunity arose to work in Glacier National Park on winter wintering habitat of elk, which Wasn't really what I wanted to do what was better than being a lab and I was out there and then this was by Coincidence, the first year that the wolves that were usually staying in the winter up in Canada would actually winter in Glacier Park and I Got to study then wolf predation on on elk.

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So with the wolves, wolf predation, you basically never actually see the predation.

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You see more the aftermath.

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You see a kill site and if you're lucky, you see some wolves around, but they're often very shy.

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But what happened then is that grizzlies came into scavenge to wolf kills and the grizzlies would hang around and you could actually observe them, and I just got stuck on the grizzlies because they were actually the most visible off the predators and and after then being a few years In Glacier Park, I then moved back up to Alaska, which I knew from a previous travel, because there you actually see the animals way more than you.

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You see them in like in Glacier Park, but we do see a grizzly occasionally but there's still a lot of vegetation cover, there's forest and you know the viewable time are very limited most often like you work more like with radio-colored bears and then Watch blimps on a computer screen.

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And I was more interested actually observing the animal.

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That was really my fascination.

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From the start it was, but at the time In biology everything went for a microbiology, in genetics and the classical biology.

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Actually observing what is happening in nature, observing wildlife was like out of vogue.

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People thought it wasn't really proper biology.

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It was seen as as anthropomorphizing behavior.

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It was seen as Not really data that you could use in any these seasons.

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So I was a little bit the oddball in the whole scientific community because that's what I was interested in.

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Is what really what people thought wasn't proper biology.

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Anymore it has come back a little bit, but in those days, so in the 80s it was not considered a career that would produce anything.

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Everything went out microbiology and genetics.

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So I'm so curious when you were in Glacier National Park and you're there to study the elk, I mean, did you have any idea that that moment, when you got fascinated with the grizzly bears, was going to change your life Significantly over the next decades?

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I mean because that's a pivotal moment.

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Oh no, I had no idea.

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I Was so struggling with just trying to fit into the university system and what they wanted from me, and there was not really any like how do you make a living, how do you fit into a system that really doesn't really Want to do what I want to do?

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So it was, I had no idea.

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I was just going from one step to the next and I went to Alaska Basically because I could see the wildlife in the open terrain much better right interesting that when I was in in Alaska, what happened was spent month in this in the field, camping and all.

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And I was asked by a Friend that I met there whether I'd be interested to write a guidebook for the tourists and particularly they wanted it bilingual because I spoke obviously German whether I could do it in German and in English.

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And I really never thought about it but To do anything like that, and so I said, okay, I'll give it a shot.

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And that really started the book writing.

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That led to another book that in Australia Then I met to coffee table books and on and on and on, and the bears were always done on the lying.

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Everything like that was always the.

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The basis for everything I did Was was bears so I'm gonna assume this.

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As you said, as a child you like to spend a great deal of time in nature and Obviously, if you're gonna do that as a child and you didn't like being in the city, it meant that you enjoyed your own company, you enjoyed the idea of solitude, and if you're in Glacier National Park you're following these, the herds of elk.

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You're obviously out camping by yourself much of the time.

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I would assume the solitude never really got to you.

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Ah well, it gets to you, but it's one of the things that's like the price you pay.

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It didn't get to me to the degree that it stopped me.

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There was that the things to.

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I had to learn like I, you have a self image, you build up a self image and Then you go out the first time on your own, on a solo trip, and you really discover that the self image and who you are is not really the same and the and I think the biggest step then is actually recover from that and then, with the new self image, go out again.

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And Then it became easier and you get total emotional highs being on your own.

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It's so intense, so I wouldn't say it's an adrenaline Rush, but there is.

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There's certain moments out in nature when everything comes together, like the light, the scenery, the wildlife, and there are like Probably, I would imagine, similar to having like a drug-dosed high.

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It's it's totally like Overwhelms you and for these moments it's worth all the hardship.

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And do you get them with other people?

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Well, if you have the right person with you, I think it can't even be better.

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The problem was always having the right person with you.

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Can you describe a moment that really took your breath away?

00:22:46.445 --> 00:22:46.747
This.

00:22:46.747 --> 00:22:51.201
It's usually Well.

00:22:51.201 --> 00:22:54.268
There was one moment but it took my breath away.

00:22:54.268 --> 00:23:01.611
For a lot of people it sounds Either weird or it brings across the wrong impression.

00:23:01.611 --> 00:23:06.542
I was photographing Bears fishing.

00:23:06.542 --> 00:23:16.960
That was like 20 years ago and I was just sitting with another person Behind my tripod along the river's edge and I've been there for about three weeks.

00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:19.191
So the bears really know you bears.

00:23:19.191 --> 00:23:25.700
If they really know you well and you know you never approached them and you never do anything to them, they just ignore you.

00:23:25.700 --> 00:23:27.246
You're just like a rock to them.

00:23:27.246 --> 00:23:46.710
And so I was sitting there and there was this bear fishing with a cup Fishing in the river, and she always went down the middle of the river and Then got out of the river with a fish or without, at the lower end of the current section, then walked up the opposite side of the river with her cup.

00:23:47.300 --> 00:24:00.051
She did that about ten times and after the tenth time she came out on my side of the river and walked by me and I mean totally ignoring me, walked by me within inches.

00:24:00.051 --> 00:24:06.304
There was nowhere I could go that quickly and it basically ended up.

00:24:06.304 --> 00:24:12.388
You did that three, four times that she walked by me like towering over me Like almost walking over me.

00:24:12.388 --> 00:24:22.582
I didn't move, I didn't go anywhere and After four times or so she Then you could see that all of a sudden she was getting interested, investigating me.

00:24:22.582 --> 00:24:28.008
There's just a different body positioning, so then I changed my body position and she walked off and that was it.

00:24:28.008 --> 00:24:34.528
And the overwhelming sensation for me was not to be that close to bear.

00:24:34.528 --> 00:24:46.031
The overwhelming Situation feeling for me was that this bear trusted me so much that it would not worry about me interfering with it, even being that close.

00:24:46.031 --> 00:24:53.233
But it was that trust relationship that was overwhelming me, not the adrenaline of having a bear that close.

00:24:54.141 --> 00:24:54.743
That's amazing.

00:24:55.165 --> 00:24:57.314
Well, this is like I'm not trying.

00:24:57.314 --> 00:24:58.700
I've never approached a bear.

00:24:58.700 --> 00:25:01.005
I always let the bear do the approach.

00:25:01.005 --> 00:25:05.073
Then you can do assess whether he's curious, whether he ignores you.

00:25:05.073 --> 00:25:13.304
If you Approach you you don't you really lose control, because you put the bear on a spot and the most Instances to bear will move off.

00:25:13.304 --> 00:25:16.352
You can only photograph the south end of a northbound bear.

00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:18.224
But if he doesn't move.

00:25:21.260 --> 00:25:30.952
I like that, but but if you don't, if he doesn't move off, you may have a problem there that really Tries to engage you, and I mean there's physically nothing you can do.

00:25:30.952 --> 00:25:32.839
If a bear what goes after you, that's it.

00:25:32.839 --> 00:25:36.623
I so Not approaching.

00:25:36.623 --> 00:25:45.888
Having leaving to bear the option of what to do then Also gives you a certain amount of control because you can assess that behavior.

00:25:45.888 --> 00:25:53.229
And I've I've had thousands of bear encounters and including polar bear.

00:25:53.229 --> 00:26:03.932
I've walked with polar bear and I had maybe two, three aggressive encounters, and that's it and and it's that includes polar bears.

00:26:03.932 --> 00:26:06.240
I mean, I have polar bears walking by me very close.

00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:14.799
It's a bit different, but overall it's the same as with brown bears and brown bears, just for people who are out there.

00:26:14.940 --> 00:26:16.423
I know because I just got back from Alaska.

00:26:16.423 --> 00:26:20.053
Brown bears and grizzly bears are essentially the same creature, correct?

00:26:21.060 --> 00:26:21.823
In North America.

00:26:21.823 --> 00:26:24.490
They're essentially the same, like brown bears.

00:26:24.490 --> 00:26:32.593
The overall term and the North American brown bear, essentially, except for the bear John Kodia are, is the grizzly it's.

00:26:32.593 --> 00:26:36.911
It's more a convention naming convention than anything else.

00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:41.391
So, as I said, I just got back from Alaska and this is where we met.

00:26:41.391 --> 00:26:45.709
Thank you so much for joining us and giving us all this information.

00:26:45.709 --> 00:26:46.411
This is amazing.

00:26:46.411 --> 00:27:00.921
But when I went on my bear watch hike, there was protection Involved with the back end, in the front end and and what I'm hearing from you is more it depends on the bears Personality.

00:27:00.921 --> 00:27:05.132
You called it a problem bear, right, or just a curious bear.

00:27:05.132 --> 00:27:08.708
So it's actually personality kind of related.

00:27:08.708 --> 00:27:09.990
Is that what I'm hearing from you?

00:27:09.990 --> 00:27:11.432
Am I translating that correctly?

00:27:12.781 --> 00:27:16.061
Well, hugely personality Related.

00:27:16.061 --> 00:27:20.460
It's related to the experience of an individual bear.

00:27:20.460 --> 00:27:29.172
It is related to like the conditions at the time, like is there a lot of food sources available?

00:27:29.172 --> 00:27:29.894
Aren't there?

00:27:29.894 --> 00:27:31.299
Is it a stress bear?

00:27:31.299 --> 00:27:32.503
Is it a relaxed bear?

00:27:32.503 --> 00:27:38.787
So there's a lot of variables that come in but generally speaking, like you put, it's like a person.

00:27:39.587 --> 00:27:44.141
You give two different people the totally is the same Circumstances.

00:27:44.141 --> 00:27:47.711
They don't react necessarily the same and bears are similar.

00:27:47.711 --> 00:28:00.183
Under the very same circumstances, one bear may behave shy, the other one boisterous, the next one aggressive, and some of it is how their experiences in life.

00:28:00.183 --> 00:28:15.518
But some of it is just inherent personality, wow, and like as a, as a biologist or as me working with bears, so much it is recognizing what type of bear do I have and how do we have towards it.

00:28:15.518 --> 00:28:20.867
It's really not any different than you have dogs or people.

00:28:20.867 --> 00:28:30.568
I, the same approach for two different people may not result in the same Well end result in the same interaction.

00:28:30.568 --> 00:28:35.732
And if you have kids I mean you're usually a kid, said if they're different.

00:28:35.732 --> 00:28:37.055
I have three daughters.

00:28:37.055 --> 00:28:47.573
They're every one is different and every one of them needs a different approach how to get the best out of them, how to make them happy, how to make them content and comfortable.

00:28:47.573 --> 00:28:50.710
They're different, and bears are too.

00:28:51.191 --> 00:28:53.579
I feel that way about my four and a half year old son.

00:28:53.579 --> 00:28:56.920
I think he changes every other day and he requires a different approach.

00:28:57.039 --> 00:29:06.268
So I understand from a from a different point of view, matias, sort of Bringing this back to the career journey a little bit.

00:29:06.268 --> 00:29:15.592
You know, as as you're developing this expertise, as you're building all of this Experience, you know, earlier you referenced, you know, your first book.

00:29:15.592 --> 00:29:22.433
When did the momentum of your career if that's the right word begin to set in?

00:29:22.433 --> 00:29:25.279
When did you become that expert?

00:29:25.279 --> 00:29:32.193
When did you start to get published most frequently and how did, how did that momentum begin to to build for you?

00:29:32.602 --> 00:29:59.355
well, and in retrospect it probably came with the first big coffee table book I produced, where then publishers publishers always look for a book project that they can bring out and to have to then recognize there is a person, we can give them that project and we're going to get a certain quality of product.

00:29:59.355 --> 00:30:15.509
So in retrospect so that would have been in the mid 90s, like 96 or so People always have the idea that you have this one breakthrough moment and everything afterwards comes easy.

00:30:15.509 --> 00:30:20.095
I never found that to be really the case.

00:30:20.095 --> 00:30:34.872
I find it is more like a journey driving down the road and you have your obstacles, you have your problems, you just keep on driving despite the obstacles, despite the problems, and the volume or the kilometers you've driven just increases.

00:30:34.872 --> 00:30:47.491
Your portfolio increases your project you've done usually get bigger because you have more funding available and it's more like a trajectory.

00:30:47.491 --> 00:30:54.116
It's not like that once point in time where all of a sudden everything works easily.

00:30:54.944 --> 00:31:01.497
So what you say that was, let's say, the impetus for publishers to seek you out.

00:31:01.497 --> 00:31:02.739
Was that what did it?

00:31:02.739 --> 00:31:06.192
The fact that I got?

00:31:06.192 --> 00:31:18.189
To be honest, I don't know how many other biologists, conservationists, were out there like you taking pictures of wildlife, but obviously you had a quality, you had an eye to what you were doing.

00:31:18.189 --> 00:31:25.635
And then it was noticed by others who had seen this, whether it be publishers, whether it be others within the scientific community.

00:31:25.635 --> 00:31:39.886
Who said Matthias is one of these people who has not only become an expert simply in his own field of conservation and biology, but simply as an artist, has elevated that to an artistry.

00:31:39.886 --> 00:31:45.012
Is that what essentially got you on that path of becoming a published author?

00:31:49.525 --> 00:31:58.058
Well, I think everyone has a niche and my niche was that I could combine a high quality.

00:31:58.819 --> 00:32:09.489
Like I have the scientific background, I can produce the content, but I also can produce the content in a way that is interesting and is appealing.

00:32:10.204 --> 00:32:26.609
Like my father was a language professor and he very much drilled into me correct German, and correct German is really it's less about grammatically correct or something that my dad always called language.

00:32:26.730 --> 00:32:34.734
Logic is that you actually create images in a language that are correct and not just some obscure incorrect vision.

00:32:34.734 --> 00:32:48.974
And as a rule and this is part of my problem, but probably part of what also made me successful like National Geographic really wants to have a photographer and a writer.

00:32:48.974 --> 00:32:58.874
They don't necessarily want to have the person being one and the same person doing both, and I think my strength is actually that I do both.

00:32:58.874 --> 00:33:08.432
So publishers they know if they hire me to write a book, they're going to get high in writing, they're going to get high in photography in one package.

00:33:08.432 --> 00:33:28.201
They don't have to shop around, they don't have to worry about whether it's scientifically correct, and that probably started very early when I brought out the first books, that they were just a quality that people were not used to seeing in these kind of coffee table books.

00:33:28.201 --> 00:33:32.296
Coffee table books were usually just simply based on images.

00:33:32.296 --> 00:33:35.133
The text was often not going to great depth.

00:33:36.424 --> 00:33:39.292
I can remember I had some of those coffee table books as a child.

00:33:40.545 --> 00:33:58.471
And I brought the scientific depth to it, which then resulted that the National Park Service made me their ambassador and do books for them, as they could trust that scientific information was correct, that the images were taken ethically and that the quality overall was good.

00:33:58.471 --> 00:34:03.825
And I think that's what they all look for, is this kind of reliability.

00:34:04.528 --> 00:34:17.793
Well, I can also say this, that it wasn't simply that the publishers were looking for the fact that they wanted someone who was quite adept at being a photographer and also someone who had the scientific chops to back it up.

00:34:17.793 --> 00:34:23.989
They were also looking to save a couple of bucks, so you could do both, trust me, that also helped as well.

00:34:23.989 --> 00:34:43.416
But no, I mean that's an incredible accomplishment the idea that not only did your books become obviously top sellers, but then it was noticed by a large organization, as you said, as you became associated with the National Park Service.

00:34:43.416 --> 00:34:46.012
So what is that relationship like?

00:34:46.012 --> 00:34:47.168
What does that relationship mean?

00:34:49.005 --> 00:35:04.110
It's never quite easy because the staff at the Park Service changes differently, so you have a good relationship with certain people and then four years later they're gone and then you have to redevelop it.

00:35:04.110 --> 00:35:24.014
But overall, like I, have a number of people within the National Park Service that really appreciate my work and push more and want me to do more projects for them because yeah, it's basically because it's easy for them, they know what they're going to get and they know not going to have any trouble.

00:35:24.014 --> 00:35:30.657
And it's a big thing for any kind of government organization the predictability.

00:35:31.164 --> 00:35:44.851
So these days, when you plan to go out and take photos and observe and do your thing, obviously it's weather related, right, there's certain times of the year you're going to go out, but how long are you out there?

00:35:44.851 --> 00:35:47.833
Do you bring any support people with you?

00:35:47.833 --> 00:35:52.530
And I mean, I know I'm getting older, how treacherous does it get?

00:35:52.530 --> 00:35:57.231
I mean you're out there in the middle of nowhere and you sometimes have to be there for very long periods of time.

00:35:57.231 --> 00:36:05.456
I know you said you developed a method and got smarter as you did it, but tell me what that learning curve was like and what it's like now when you go out.

00:36:05.704 --> 00:36:11.871
Well, I used to do a lot of solo trips simply because I couldn't find anyone that would come out for any length of time.

00:36:11.871 --> 00:36:21.391
People were always willing to go for like five, six days, but anything longer than a week was usually problematic, and I never wanted to go for less than two or three weeks.

00:36:21.391 --> 00:36:36.431
It just takes too long to get familiar with areas and the cost for like travel is basically the same whether you go for three weeks or for one week, so I was also cost factor in it.

00:36:36.431 --> 00:36:45.909
I did a lot on my own, which today I would consider to be too risky because there was really no backup.

00:36:45.909 --> 00:36:51.972
Nowadays you have in reach, so you have these emergency transmitters that didn't exist.

00:36:51.972 --> 00:37:03.429
Then I still do projects on my own if I can't find anyone to go with me, but I don't do bear projects on my own.

00:37:03.429 --> 00:37:13.838
You always want a second person with you at least, and the reason beyond safety is also if you're on your own, the bears want to interact with you.

00:37:13.838 --> 00:37:16.731
If you have just one person with you, they usually ignore you.

00:37:17.373 --> 00:37:17.795
Interesting.

00:37:18.365 --> 00:37:20.612
So when they're bears to some degree work as individuals.

00:37:20.612 --> 00:37:31.512
They don't really work as a team unit, and so whenever there's two people, a bear feels outnumbered, so they just generally leave you alone.

00:37:31.512 --> 00:37:36.717
If you're on your own, you have all these juveniles who want to interact with you and you don't get anything done.

00:37:36.717 --> 00:37:41.954
You spent your entire time just trying to stop bears from interacting with you.

00:37:43.764 --> 00:37:45.210
So there is that aspect.

00:37:45.210 --> 00:37:49.467
The other one is safety With bears.

00:37:49.467 --> 00:37:53.056
Ultimately you're totally overpowered.

00:37:53.056 --> 00:37:59.998
This is an animal that is in every way highly superior to you physically.

00:37:59.998 --> 00:38:06.215
So I always have some like either bear spray or a flare with me for protection.

00:38:06.215 --> 00:38:09.748
That's just plan B.

00:38:09.748 --> 00:38:14.891
If you don't have that, I mean I would consider this pretty much a suicide mission.

00:38:14.891 --> 00:38:20.275
Sooner or later you're going to run into a bear that really wants to push the limits.

00:38:20.275 --> 00:38:22.527
So you have to have plan B.

00:38:22.527 --> 00:38:29.159
But yeah, I usually have one person with me and I go out as well.

00:38:29.159 --> 00:38:33.235
The longest I've been out was six weeks, but generally it's three to four weeks.

00:38:33.235 --> 00:38:39.297
If you go longer than three or four weeks, food becomes a real problematic issue.

00:38:39.297 --> 00:38:44.775
It's tough to go longer than like three to four weeks with the food you can bring.

00:38:45.625 --> 00:38:54.070
So earlier you described a positive experience with a bear who was fishing, came out of the water, walked by.

00:38:54.070 --> 00:39:04.753
You Can you describe and hopefully you can't, I'm hoping the answer to this question is no, but can you describe a negative encounter with a bear?

00:39:05.304 --> 00:39:16.061
Well, there is two that spring to mind A bear encounter which was really independent of my actions, likes.

00:39:16.061 --> 00:39:26.867
I had a couple of encounter where your surprise a bear and the bear just gives you a warning and I don't really consider that aggressive interaction.

00:39:26.867 --> 00:39:27.047
It's.

00:39:27.047 --> 00:39:36.088
It's spooky at the moment because you never noticed the bear was there, but it wasn't really that the bear was truly aggressive, it was just defensive.

00:39:36.088 --> 00:39:49.362
I had two bears and I think they're the only two, and sometimes you wonder whether you blend out some negative experiences, but I think it was only only two instances when I had truly an aggressive bear.

00:39:49.362 --> 00:40:05.746
One was doing the mating period, where there was one male grizzly around who, for whatever reason, saw people and then including me as competition in his armor is endeavors you would.

00:40:08.356 --> 00:40:24.007
He would go after you and he, like you, would try to give him as far as you could stay far away from him, because he would only go after you if he doesn't have a female and then thought you were like encroaching on his female.

00:40:24.007 --> 00:40:40.041
I was one case where I was camping and I would need to get water and I went through the brush, made noise, went through the brush to get to the creek to get water, and I come out of the brush and I look to the left and I see the female.

00:40:40.041 --> 00:40:46.891
That dark, aggressive male was with like 30 yards away and I said holy crap.

00:40:46.891 --> 00:40:59.090
And then, right, the next second, the next second, I saw the male behind that female and as soon as he saw me he just went at the dead run for me.

00:41:00.036 --> 00:41:00.737
You always say.

00:41:00.737 --> 00:41:11.139
You always say that you could, you should never run from a bear, which is true in almost all circumstances, but you can't stand up to this bear.

00:41:11.139 --> 00:41:19.304
So I actually then ran the other way and the bear only wanted to get me out of his way and as soon as I took off he stopped.

00:41:19.304 --> 00:41:24.224
That was very spooky.

00:41:24.224 --> 00:41:26.728
That also can go really wrong if you do the wrong thing.

00:41:26.728 --> 00:41:31.324
And the other one was a polar bear and the polar bear.

00:41:31.603 --> 00:41:37.242
I was camped on an island and I was there because I knew the polar bears.

00:41:37.242 --> 00:41:43.001
That polar bears travel in the summer along the coast and look for food and stuff.

00:41:43.001 --> 00:41:47.188
They don't just lie down and wait for ice to return a particularly if they're younger bears.

00:41:47.188 --> 00:41:48.170
They also need food.

00:41:48.170 --> 00:41:58.543
And so I was camping on that island because I knew these polar bears would come by and I was hoping to get them and the flowers there, which I got.

00:41:58.543 --> 00:42:06.286
But then we had a big storm and the storm took down our tent and all of that.

00:42:06.286 --> 00:42:16.530
And when the storm lifted we saw a bear coming behind our campsite and then he was just behind some rocks.

00:42:16.530 --> 00:42:29.523
We couldn't see him and wondering what he was doing and the bear moved off and then we moved over to where that bear was, because he couldn't figure out what that bear was there for about an hour and it turned out there was a dead beluga washed up on shore.

00:42:29.623 --> 00:42:31.307
Oh, wow, oh, my goodness.

00:42:32.235 --> 00:42:32.496
Which.

00:42:32.496 --> 00:42:44.108
So then we had within a hundred yards from our, of our tent and a major food source for polar bears and within two days we had twenty seven polar bears on that beluga.

00:42:44.108 --> 00:43:07.295
And so this was then when I started walking with polar bears, because initially I thought this would be really bad because, like, if you have a moose carcass, you have grizzly on it, you have one happy bear and a lot of unhappy bears around it, and but the polar bears actually shared the food sources so they were not more aggressive.

00:43:07.295 --> 00:43:12.947
But then one bear came up and he saw us from with me and one more guy.

00:43:12.947 --> 00:43:24.795
He saw us from easily a mile away and he started running at us and then I ended running at him to stop him from running and make him think and he went sideways and he kept running at me and ran at him.

00:43:24.795 --> 00:43:43.807
So this went back and forth for about half an hour until he was about fifteen yards away and I mean he was still really pushing and trying to get in right on us and the guy next to me had a shotgun alarm and I told him OK, he becomes closer.

00:43:43.807 --> 00:43:47.304
So you don't have an option like I dropped to the ground.

00:43:47.304 --> 00:43:49.862
You try to hit him and not me.

00:43:49.862 --> 00:43:52.601
And that's when the bear gave up.

00:43:53.675 --> 00:44:10.690
And then later on I showed the images to to a local conservation officer and that was a garbage bear from a town 60 miles away who had learned to associate food with people.

00:44:10.690 --> 00:44:19.579
So when he got the smell of the beluga and he saw us, he thought we are where the food is and again, something wrong.

00:44:19.579 --> 00:44:23.166
It would have been either bad for us or bad for the bear.

00:44:23.166 --> 00:44:31.019
I mean, we had a shotgun along, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can, that you get out of it unharmed.

00:44:31.019 --> 00:44:37.498
Even if you have got along, people have the tendency to think if you have something like bear spray or a gun along, you automatically save.

00:44:37.498 --> 00:44:51.768
Well, theoretically, but most bear attacks are surprise encounters and so you would never even get anything up in that short of time to defend yourself.

00:44:51.768 --> 00:44:56.485
It's much more important that you stay alert and that you actually have something along to defend yourself.

00:44:57.275 --> 00:44:57.496
All right.

00:44:57.496 --> 00:45:08.626
So, matias, when, when did you make that transition from the camera to to, or from photographer to cinematographer, and what was that transition like?

00:45:08.626 --> 00:45:11.922
Or maybe it's even, maybe that's even the wrong question to ask.

00:45:11.922 --> 00:45:21.304
Maybe I should really be asking have you ever really transitioned from photographer to cinematographer, or is it all just the idea of the image?

00:45:23.074 --> 00:45:31.286
Well, I do both, so it's not really necessarily a transition that I stopped doing one to do the other.

00:45:31.286 --> 00:45:50.764
The ultimately filming and photography is still trying to get some appealing message across, as photography in some ways is harder than cinematography or otherwise cinematographer can be harder than then.

00:45:50.764 --> 00:46:00.422
Photography is cinematography, you always need a sequence and photography you need only individual images.

00:46:00.422 --> 00:46:06.403
But you can hide stuff in a sequence, you can't hide an individual image and vice versa.

00:46:06.403 --> 00:46:09.224
So it's not really one is easier than the other.

00:46:09.224 --> 00:46:13.123
It's just a different medium and around 2000.

00:46:15.755 --> 00:46:37.201
I was asked to work on a conservation project with a friend and I was photographing, she was filming, and then we ended up both filming which was related to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and from that on I've always been to some degree involved with documentary.

00:46:37.201 --> 00:46:48.405
So it's documentary work for discovery, for a geoforce Smithsonian Channel and ultimately it's a similar thing.

00:46:48.405 --> 00:47:03.885
You try to get a message across that attracts people and I was hoping through filming I would just reach a larger audience and hopefully I did, but and I'm assuming that the documentary we're talking about is Nature First correct.

00:47:06.135 --> 00:47:21.581
The documentary like I did like Polar Bear Summer for Smithsonian right I worked on like the Grizzly Empire for the world west for my geo, so there was a number of that.

00:47:21.581 --> 00:47:24.547
Did for Polar Bear Show, for Angry Planet.

00:47:24.547 --> 00:47:28.125
I showed George Corunas how to walk among Polar Bear.

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So there is a bunch of shows.

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I was involved with Wait, so expound on that one.

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What was that all about?

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Embracing the Call of the Wild with Matthias Breiter

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