Charlie: One of the visual mantras when we were hatching this Yellowstone article was we want iconic landscapes with animals in. I ended up getting the Tetons which is great if you're a landscape photographer which I'm not. And Ansel Adams, the most famous brilliant landscape photographer there ever was photographed one of his most famous pictures here. How the hell am I gonna top that?

Few years ago, I was called into a meeting a lunch meeting and you know, the Geographic told me we're gonna do this whole issue special on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. And I was asked to become one of the team. And it's, you know, it's 50,000 square miles Western Wyoming, Southern Montana, Eastern Idaho. Some amazing areas, Grand Teton, it's the Wind River range, it's Yellowstone. It's got incredible wildlife. Incredible opportunity to be asked to do this. So I got very excited, I went home... I grabbed my wife and the kids and we actually brought a Peli-case full of Lego which was one of the requirements from my son. And we got to Heathrow and they upgraded the whole family to business class. We thought, “What? This doesn't happen.” Right, so we get on business class and we do what everyone who gets upgraded to business class does which is drink all the champagne. Because the people who can afford to go on business class they're not that bothered by it. But, anyway. So, we get drunk, we have a row, and then... An hour into the flight, I'm thinking “Wonder how Arthur is getting on...” Um... Arthur was seven at the time, and they they had these sort of mid-row seats and these little reclining windows that went up and down. So, I stood up I and look over and there's Arthur and he's fully reclined his seat. He's in an aisle seat. And he's lying like that... stark naked. Right. It was just brilliant. And there was this guy sitting opposite on the other side of the aisle and he just did not, he didn't know what to do. And so, and I said, What you doing? He said, I was hot. Can't argue with it, can you?

Anyway, so we get to immigration and you-- We get to the immigration office and you know, the desk. And they're all very officious here, aren't they? Not friendly at all. There we-- I'm always nervous always feel like I've done something wrong. And the guy says, you know, Sir, why are you here? You know, I very proudly say You know, “I'm a National Geographic photographer. I'm coming to do, you know, a story on Yellowstone.” And he looks at me and he goes “Haven't you guys done that enough times already? And, why are they getting a Brit to do it?” So... Yeah, you know, we probably have done it enough times already. But, we've never done it, quite like we've just done it. You know, and we-- I guarantee you we won't be doing it again.

Anyway, so... yeah, I bring the kids out the family and we all go American. The kids, you know, we get cowboy boots. We move to Wyoming. And we kind of got into this whole like, Griswold road-tripping around the States. And... they had a great time. Look you can see 'em in Valley of the Gods here. They had a fantastic morning there.

So, I ended up, as part of the project I ended up getting the Tetons. You know, if you go to the Tetons at six o'clock in the morning in October, it looks like this. You know, it doesn't look like the first frame of the Tetons actually, it's full of people. So, we had teams all over. But, you know, there were teams in Yellowstone for the Yellowstone issue. But I got the south end of the ecosystem, I got the Tetons. Which is great, and you know fantastic if you're a landscape photographer, which I'm not. Um, because, you know you're basically charged with photographing A, the most beautiful place in the world B, the most photographed, most iconic I mean hell, you've got the Tetons. And Ansel Adams, the most famous brilliant landscape photographer there ever was photographed one of his most famous pictures here. How the hell am I gonna top that? That's easy, you know. That's what I did. Get someone else do it for me. The thing is right, as a photographer, right. You'll laugh at that. We all know what he's doing, don't we? We're all just a bit cynical, it's kind of funny. As a photographer, I think “Why are you doing it with a tripod?” You know what I mean. It's the middle of the day. “What on earth are you thinking?” And I actually want to form the tripod police. Because I live in Jackson. I just wanted to go and batter people to death with tripods. Because there, it's like lunchtime on a sunny day and there's a man, it's always a bloke women are not that stupid. There's always a man photographing the Tetons with a tripod. What are you doing! Anyway... I could go on about it all night if you want.

Okay. So why did they, so we've answered, yeah—“So, why did they send a Brit to Yellowstone?” Well, Amongst other things I am, I guess an aquatic species specialist. I shoot technically complicated photos of mainly, fresh water animals. And that is such an incredibly minute niche that no one else has bothered to do it. So I got it. As you know, I like Otters. If I say Otters in Wyoming, everyone just looks at me and just thinks I'm someone from Downton Abbey. So I have to say Otters All the time. And then they look at me, “Why are you taking piss out of us?” So, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard-- First world problems. Anyway, um... I'm an aquatic species specialist. I love Otters. So we do a lot of them, they're part of the story. But, I use, sort of taking the techniques I've learned shooting Otters and have moved it on to other animals. We all had a meeting in DC when we were sort of hatching this Yellowstone article. And we, well, one of the visual mantras, I guess, was “We want iconic landscapes with animals in.” Which is great if you are... Well, if you're an underwater photographer what are you supposed to do?

Anyway, basically I turned the first few weeks into location scout. How can I get these animals in landscapes underwater. And this is what I ended up with. But, one of the reasons I like this style of photography and, you know, this image, is because, up here up top right there, you can see all the sticks. That's, that's a beaver dam. Right. And this beaver and its relatives and its ancestors have created, they built that dam. They've created this entire water world this entire ecosystem. They've engineered the landscape. And they've done it at the foot of the Tetons. So, for me, a picture like that tells a much bigger story. On this shot list, I think “Oh, we need a shot of an Otter eating a Cutthroat trout, don't we?” Can't have a Brook trout or a Mountain Whitefish. No, we gotta have a bloody Cutthroat trout. Do you know how many shots I got, like 50,000 photos of Otters eating the wrong species of fish. It just drives you nuts. And they're nice pictures. Nope, gotta be a Cutthroat trout. Anyway, the reason is because I'm telling a story. One of the stories I'm telling is that about the Cutthroat trout ecosystem. And Otters are something that eat Cutthroat trout. So let me tell you about the Cutthroat trout ecosystem. Right, you've got all the waterways, you know You've got Snake River in Jackson Hole and Yellowstone Lake and Jackson Lake. You've got this incredible water system up there. And the key fish in that system is the Cutthroat trout. Forty-two species rely on it for their survival. That's a really important species to keep that a healthy ecosystem. And one of the problems is, is that many years ago someone introduced Lake trout into Yellowstone Lake and in fact, many of the lakes. And Lake trout, grow very fast, they're very aggressive and they eat Cutthroat trout. But, the problem with Lake trout is they're a deep water fish. Now, Cutthroat are a shallow water fish which means they're accessible to all the predators. As the Lake trout population grew and the Cutthroat trout population shrunk it started to affect the ecosystem. So this is, like, this is a really important story for an article that we are doing on the Yellowstone. And one of the ways that Yellowstone are tackling this. They're actually spending around two million dollars a year on what they call a Lake trout Suppression Program. So they're gillnetting and catching Lake trout. Last year, I think they got a record 700,000 Lake trout out of Yellowstone Lake. But what-- the thing that always got me was they catch a few and they tag them and then they let them go. And these, they call Judas fish. And those Judas fish would give away the breeding grounds, the spawning grounds. And they could map them, you know on a map they could see where the spawning grounds were. So, they could really start to pin point exactly... where to go and catch them. This is a few days I spent out. It's a really decent Lake trout. They're called Mackinaw as well.

As well as doing the underwater stuff I also like camera trapping, and here is how a camera trap works. Right, you've got a beam. In fact, you can see it because I haven't done my job properly. Alright, see that camouflage block there? Right, that's sending an infrared beam to another block. And... then there's a camera and on this shot there's five different strobe lights. And then, you can just leave that for, like, a month. So, what it allows you to do it allows you to get very close to wildlife but-- and then have a very wide background so you can still get that sort of epic, iconic landscape in the background. In this case, you can see the Tetons in the background there. So you get a photo of Bambi. And you've got-- everything that wants to eat Bambi, basically. So, there's Yogi. My house was just down... So interesting what went past my house. It's like, half a mile away. And then a mountain lion. This is like, four months or something on this little trail I found. But, what it allows you to do is get everything that wants to eat Bambi but, without getting eaten yourself. And that's the key to this. Because when I first arrived I was driving along one day, just near my house. I saw a dead moose on the side of the river. So, I thought, “Oh, we got to photograph that.” Not the dead moose. Sorry, I don't want to photograph the dead moose. But, I knew something would come to it. So, Hector and I, my assistant we went down and we had to poke around and there were some big bear tracks right next to it. And this is April. So they had all just, you know they were just getting up from hibernation. But I, really underestimated just how dangerous bears were. Because, you know, I'd read a couple of books and I got some bear spray. But, the thing I fundamentally didn't know that you don't go near his meal. Right. So we'd go down there, at dusk which is the most absurd thing you can do. And we'd sing because I read that you had to make some noise. But it was, Hector would always go first. That's the job of the assistant, isn't it, take one for the team. Show your commitment, it's you he wants. So... we'd sing like this sort of terrified karaoke all the way there. And... then we'd set a camera up. But we'd set the camera up at dusk, which is just nuts. And then, one day we went down to check it and the whole thing was just smashed. And I pick the camera, and the filter is just smashed in half and there's mud everywhere, and all the strobes everywhere. I pick the camera, I press play on it. And this guy was just looming over me. Look at his nails, he's just you know, he hasn't had a pedicure yet. He's just gotten out of hibernation. So, we just pick the kit up, then we just got out there.

This is a carcass dump. To me, this is a story about park management. This is a road killed bison. You can see all the bones of all the dead animals all around there. When a tourist is driving too fast, which they do all the time they kill a bison or an elk or a moose or a mule deer. They pick them up and they dump them in this secluded place. And that keeps, you know if you've got a dead elk on the side of the road you're gonna get bears and wolves and everything else coming to the side of the road. And that's gonna, firstly cause, you know, safety problems. Also, you're gonna have traffic jams. So, this is how they manage their wildlife. The whole way that the parks are managed here is efficiently and effectively and to an extent I would say dominionistic but also extremely good.