This summer, a small group of photographers, all of them with international reputations, will focus their shared passions for the wilderness on the southeastern corner of British Columbia.
There in the Flathead Valley, an area the B.C. government most values for its coal, timber and methane gas, the photographers will undertake a remarkable project that is intended to draw the world's attention to an area many people want protected as a national park.
Garth Lenz, a Victoria-based photographer, is co-ordinating what is known as a RAVE – an acronym for Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition – in which small teams will work feverishly for a week, compiling an inventory of pictures that will be posted on the Web and offered to media globally.
The hope is that the images of the area, which lies along the dramatic western edge of the Rocky Mountains, will be so stunning the governments of B.C. and Canada will move to protect the region before proposed major resource projects go ahead.
RAVEs are undertaken by members of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a group that tries to use the power of visual images to save endangered spaces.
“For conservation to be most effective, people need to care. But unless people have a sensory relationship to what is being saved it is difficult for them to develop an emotional connection,” states the ILCP, which was founded in 2005 by 40 of the most outstanding nature photographers in the world.
This will be the first RAVE in Canada, with past projects focusing on Balandra, Mexico; Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea; and the U.S. Wyoming Range.
“We're bringing a critical mass of energy to this and are hoping to create some wonderful images,” Mr. Lenz said.
Mr. Lenz, whose work has appeared in Time magazine and The New York Times, as well as The Globe and Mail, travels the world on assignment. His artistic prints, which use natural light to capture the startling beauty of such common things as a grove of trees, sell for upward of $2,000.
Mr. Lenz confirmed the Flathead RAVE, which he's been organizing for several months, “is definitely a go and will be occurring from July 17 to 25, with possibly a few extra days.”
It doesn't sound like much time, but he will be scouting the area beforehand, to help direct efforts, and their will be aircraft, land and water support to get photographers around.
Mr. Lenz studied river-flow data, looked at forest-fire records, took note of various hunting seasons and learned when wild flowers bloom before choosing the RAVE dates.
He wanted to avoid flood waters, so underwater photography would be possible, but also wanted enough flow to allow rafting.
He wanted photographers to be able to find alpine meadows splashed with colour, which meant the spring period was out because the high elevations bloom late. But summer put him into forest-fire season and fall brought out the hunters.
Mr. Lenz balanced all those things and picked a period that is the “best bet” to show off the beauty of the Flathead. He acknowledges that in such a short window, weather could mess things up, or a haze of smoke could drift in and spoil the light for the whole time.
There are no guarantees in the wilderness. So they will go and take their chances, which is all that any nature photographer can do in the end.
Mr. Lenz, Cristina Mittermeier and Matthias Breiter will be the main photographers on the RAVE.
Ms. Mittermeier is a founding member and current executive director of the ILCP. A photographer and writer, she has worked on nine books including Hotspots: Earth's biologically richest and most endangered spaces; and Wilderness Areas: Earth's Last Wild Places .
Mr. Breiter, who is based in Alaska, is renowned for his breathtaking pictures of bears and has produced several books, including The Bears of Katmai . It's an impressive team and other award-winning photographers may join the effort.
They will travel from the high alpine to the bottom of the Flathead River and their images, when they appear on the Web, will no doubt make a lot of people wonder why the B.C. government hasn't already moved to protect the area.
To learn more about RAVE projects, go to the ILCP website at http://ilcp.com/.
