Early in my career I discovered that there was something really special about photographing at night that places your mind on the surface of the planet. You’re no longer just a human being walking around in the regular world. You’re a human animal striding around on the surface of the planet that’s out in the middle of the galaxy. We as a culture, we’re forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature. We totally depend on it.

James Balog

Categorized in : Night Animal Divorce

We as a culture are forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very, very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature - we totally depend on it.

James Balog

divorce connections civilization

I've always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception.

James Balog

shapes perception photography

The cumulative effect of each person making a change in his or her own life will make a difference.

James Balog

making-changes making-a-difference differences

I have often thought that my work with wildlife taught me the meaning of patience, and my work with the big trees taught me the meaning of humility, and my work with the ice has taught me the meaning of mortality.

James Balog

ice humility tree

Each of us can and must shift our behavior according to our ability. For some, that means changing diet, shopping locally, or putting solar panels on their house. For others, it means using their voice to inspire transformative change.

James Balog

shopping voice mean

There is a glacier in Iceland, Solheimar, which has retreated a great deal, and every time I go back there and see what's not there any more, it does something to the heart. It makes you realise it's possible for a gigantic natural element to just disappear.

James Balog

iceland doe heart

The 'New Yorker' asked me to shoot a story on climate change in 2005, and I wound up going to Iceland to shoot a glacier. The real story wasn't the beautiful white top. It ended up being at the terminus of the glacier where it's dying.

James Balog

iceland real beautiful

Glacial pace is actually an incorrect concept. The glaciers move a lot faster and they react a lot faster than people imagine.

James Balog

pace people moving

You can't divorce civilization from nature - we totally depend on it.

James Balog

depends divorce civilization

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves an essential spiritual and ethical question: Are we the kind of people who take everything for ourselves and leave nothing for others, or do the angels of our better nature still live? I believe the angels are still alive.

James Balog

angel spiritual believe

In some cases, I allow the edge of the set, the edge of my own artificial, artistic imposition, to show up because I don't want to hide from that. I want to acknowledge that there is a living human and a living eye and a living mind and a living heart responding to what's going on out there.

James Balog

eye mind heart

When I worked with wildlife a lot in the Eighties and Nineties, I learnt the meaning of patience. And when I worked with trees, I learned the meaning of humility.

James Balog

wildlife humility tree

The problem is almost everybody is just recording the world with home photographic toys, not doing metaphor or ideas. We have a photographic culture that's not conditioned to think in terms of symbol.

James Balog

home ideas thinking

I've got at least two major project ideas that I've been chewing on for several years in my head and I've been trying to resist them both. But I have learned over the years that when they don't go away and they're still in there, you probably have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to do something about them.

James Balog

two years ideas

I personally spend the majority of my time by far on outreach and education and fundraising and administration.

James Balog

fundraising majority administration

I've been to the Himalayas a half a dozen times and I love it. I'm just kind of tired of going literally twelve time zones around the world. I would rather go six time zones and get to Iceland or whatever it is.

James Balog

time-zones iceland tired

I was raised a Catholic as a boy and went to a Catholic boys' high school, a private school, and kind of drifted away, candidly, in my latter teen years. I consider myself deeply spiritual but not in an institutional, religious kind of a way. In Catholicism, we're surrounded by these images of martyrdom and doing penance and doing some suffering to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And I certainly embedded that in my psyche and I have lived that very effectively.

James Balog

religious spiritual school

Climate change is real. Climate change is being substantially increased by humans and the carbon we put into the atmosphere. And it appears to be speeding up. If science has made any mistakes, science has been underestimating it.

James Balog

climate-change real change science

Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.

James Balog

back look time people

At the age of 60, you see how short the runway is in front of you and how long the runway is behind you, and that you don't have much time left.

James Balog

you age time long