{"id":18712,"date":"2024-05-03T19:01:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T19:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/?p=18712"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:51:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:51:59","slug":"the-new-age-of-women-in-wildlife-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/03\/the-new-age-of-women-in-wildlife-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Age of Women in Wildlife Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Rylee<\/a>\n

Meet Rylee Jensen (pictured above), a passionate photographer and ambassador for Girls Who Click<\/a>\u2014the empowering organization, founded by Suzi\u00a0Eszterhas<\/span><\/a>, dedicated to bridging the gender gap in nature photography for young women aged 13-30. In this guest blog, Rylee shares her insights into the challenges and triumphs of navigating social media, tackling gender biases, and finding her unique niche as a photographer. <\/span>Explore how mentorship and community has empowered Rylee and her peers to break barriers, pursue their passions, and shape conservation narratives through visual storytelling<\/span>. Throughout the blog, Rylee has handpicked imagery from Nature Picture Library’s female photographers, spotlighting the groundbreaking work of women who are reshaping the landscape of a traditionally male-dominated industry.<\/p>\n

Finding your Niche<\/h2>\n
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A gray wolf trots across the steamy landscape of Yellowstone National Park. In this land of fire and ice, wolves simultaneously embrace negative temperatures in the winter and navigate geyser basins where the sleeping supervolcano below the surface breathes through the Earth’s crust. Yellowstone is not only a geothermic wonder, but one of the few intact ecosystems in the contiguous United States that can support native large carnivores like wolves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to survive in a variety of complex environments and coexist with their neighbors, animals must carve out their own \u201cniche\u201d in space and time, which refers to the unique role species occupy in their respective ecosystems. This could mean being nocturnal while everyone else is out and about during the day, or specializing in a particular diet to avoid competition for resources. For example, mesocarnivores like bobcats, coyotes, and foxes all coexist through subtle changes in diet and habitat use: bobcats prefer brushy habitat where they can avoid detection and ambush small mammals, coyotes spend time in open meadows and often scavenge from larger carnivores, and foxes lie somewhere in the middle. In this way, these three species are able to persist and share the same space without conflict.<\/p>\n

Photographers, too, must find our own niche in this rapidly changing modern world. Social media has changed the game when it comes to visibility, networking, finding opportunities, and boosting our careers. The field is saturated with millions of photographers on apps like Instagram and Facebook, not to mention the ever-growing prevalence of AI infiltrating artistic spaces. Wildlife photography, in particular, is a specialized sphere of visual media that comes with its own set of challenges; it can be physically demanding, mentally taxing, and expensive with gear and travel costs. It often seems like there are no images that haven\u2019t already been captured before, or \u201csecret gem\u201d locations that have not already been revealed. Additionally, women in this field often encounter hurdles that highlight the unique reality we face on a regular basis compared to our male colleagues:<\/p>\n

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\u00a0– Planning out travel routes and backup plans carefully when shooting solo.<\/p>\n

\u00a0– Trying to appear agreeable and not \u201chigh maintenance\u201d to senior colleagues who make us uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0– \u201cDid you really take those photos?\u201d being asked of us at every art market we participate in.<\/p>\n