Visual Perspectives
BY TORI PHELPS
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P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y C LY D E B U T C H E R
n the war against environmental degradation, a celebrated shutterbug uses his camera as the ultimate weapon.
Acclaimed nature photographer Clyde Butcher hopes his pictures don’t end up in a museum—at least, not as part of an exhibit on extinct ecosystems. He is privy to some of the nation’s most spectacular biological phenomena through a storied career spent capturing everything from California’s redwood forests to Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve and now finds it impossible to simply take pictures. So he’s decided to take a stand. And while doing so, he’ll continue to show the world exactly what he’s fighting for.
88 | JULY 2019
For Butcher, a California native, Mother Nature and photos have gone hand in hand since he was nine years old. That was the summer his parents bought him a camera to document the family’s trip to several national parks. Photography wasn’t something he considered as a career, though; instead, he pursued architecture at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. There was only one problem: he couldn’t draw well enough to illustrate his designs accurately. The resourceful college student built a simple but serviceable pinhole camera in hopes that it would help convey his architectural ideas. It did.
