This brings me to really
I think probably the most important story for me
that I have ever worked on.
Which was a story about Charles Darwin.
The story was called “Was Darwin wrong?”
And then in the magazine it said “No.”
You know, ’cause essentially everything he said
is true and correct.
And, so we did this article on Darwin.
And these are the birds that he collected in the Galapagos.
And that’s one of the privileges
of being a Geographic photographer.
You call up the British Museum and you know
most of the time they’ll say “Yes”.
If you want to– I want to see this or this
and they’ll let you do it, if you pay them.
So these are birds that Darwin collected in the Galapagos
which helped him found his theory
because the beaks are different sizes
even though they are the same species.
This is essentially an example of island bio-evolution
which for the story that we did for the magazine
you know, everybody would have expected
you to go to the Galapagos but
Todd James, photo editor decided that we shouldn’t and I agreed.
But this was a really difficult story to work on.
We were in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic
and Puerto Rico shooting these different anoles
which are the same species
but have evolved separately and differently.
We made comparative photos between
gorilla hands and a human skeletal hand.
This is a naked mole rat, which is an amazing story.
A 100 years before one was found
Darwin predicted that there would be
a mammal that had hive-like behavior.
And in the horn of Africa they found these animals.
This is a 26-year old individual.
She’s a queen and has bred thousands of offspring.
And the interesting thing about this is that
these stories always come back to where I learn something.
or I reapply something I’ve learned.
But the researcher on this told me that
there is all this research going on about, you know
how they don’t get certain kinds of diseases.
And the naked mole rats don’t get cancer.
So, this is going to be…
it’s holding good promise for research in different areas.
And this was actually Darwin’s beetle collection
which was great because that’s how Darwin became interested
in the natural world was because
he was a beetle collector as a kid.
Then we come to Alfred Russel Wallace.
He’s a naturalist, much younger than Darwin.
He wasn’t from a wealthy family like Darwin
and he became a commercial Victorian collector
who would go to different parts of the world
and send back specimens for people.
This is pre-television,
pre-film, pre-magazines.
So, people would have, you know,
cassowaries stuffed in their parlor
that they could talk about.
So it was a form of just decoration and entertainment.
He had an idea, he wrote Darwin a letter, and mailed it to him.
Darwin gets this letter
and then he doesn’t do anything for two weeks.
It’s called “Darwin’s Pause”.
And, he’s floored because Wallace
has the same idea as him.
Essentially the exact same idea that he has about
the thing that makes evolution work is natural selection.
So, he didn’t do anything for two weeks, then he announces
the Theory of Evolution via natural selection.
And he, it’s…
the theory is by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Darwin had been working on this for 25 years
since he got off the Beagle
and he may have not published it until he passed away
because his family was religious.
At least his wife’s family was.
But I think he was forced to publish
because of Wallace’s paper.
We also were able to go to a tuberculosis prison,
a multi-drug resistant tuberculosis prison,
where it was developed accidentally in Siberia.
We used this in the story as
an example of survival of the fittest,
which is a really well-known concept of evolution.
What happened was the authorities in this prison
didn’t use enough antibiotics.
They used enough to contain it but the germs evolved
and changed and became immune to the antibiotics.
They’ve actually found traces of this kind of tuberculosis
in Brighton Beach, in Long Island.
You know, we were working on it like crazy.
We had to get TB tests before we went
and after we came back.
This was a wonderful opportunity for me because
it was a big story, I think it was 48 pages
and it was just that the topic became so interesting to me
that we travelled for 58 days to
I think, 12 different countries and 26 different locations.
And we were doing it on four-by-five film
so it was a really challenging, challenging assignment.
And it was three weeks before my wedding, so…
Thank you very much.
( applause )
I think probably the most important story for me
that I have ever worked on.
Which was a story about Charles Darwin.
The story was called “Was Darwin wrong?”
And then in the magazine it said “No.”
You know, ’cause essentially everything he said
is true and correct.
And, so we did this article on Darwin.
And these are the birds that he collected in the Galapagos.
And that’s one of the privileges
of being a Geographic photographer.
You call up the British Museum and you know
most of the time they’ll say “Yes”.
If you want to– I want to see this or this
and they’ll let you do it, if you pay them.
So these are birds that Darwin collected in the Galapagos
which helped him found his theory
because the beaks are different sizes
even though they are the same species.
This is essentially an example of island bio-evolution
which for the story that we did for the magazine
you know, everybody would have expected
you to go to the Galapagos but
Todd James, photo editor decided that we shouldn’t and I agreed.
But this was a really difficult story to work on.
We were in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic
and Puerto Rico shooting these different anoles
which are the same species
but have evolved separately and differently.
We made comparative photos between
gorilla hands and a human skeletal hand.
This is a naked mole rat, which is an amazing story.
A 100 years before one was found
Darwin predicted that there would be
a mammal that had hive-like behavior.
And in the horn of Africa they found these animals.
This is a 26-year old individual.
She’s a queen and has bred thousands of offspring.
And the interesting thing about this is that
these stories always come back to where I learn something.
or I reapply something I’ve learned.
But the researcher on this told me that
there is all this research going on about, you know
how they don’t get certain kinds of diseases.
And the naked mole rats don’t get cancer.
So, this is going to be…
it’s holding good promise for research in different areas.
And this was actually Darwin’s beetle collection
which was great because that’s how Darwin became interested
in the natural world was because
he was a beetle collector as a kid.
Then we come to Alfred Russel Wallace.
He’s a naturalist, much younger than Darwin.
He wasn’t from a wealthy family like Darwin
and he became a commercial Victorian collector
who would go to different parts of the world
and send back specimens for people.
This is pre-television,
pre-film, pre-magazines.
So, people would have, you know,
cassowaries stuffed in their parlor
that they could talk about.
So it was a form of just decoration and entertainment.
He had an idea, he wrote Darwin a letter, and mailed it to him.
Darwin gets this letter
and then he doesn’t do anything for two weeks.
It’s called “Darwin’s Pause”.
And, he’s floored because Wallace
has the same idea as him.
Essentially the exact same idea that he has about
the thing that makes evolution work is natural selection.
So, he didn’t do anything for two weeks, then he announces
the Theory of Evolution via natural selection.
And he, it’s…
the theory is by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Darwin had been working on this for 25 years
since he got off the Beagle
and he may have not published it until he passed away
because his family was religious.
At least his wife’s family was.
But I think he was forced to publish
because of Wallace’s paper.
We also were able to go to a tuberculosis prison,
a multi-drug resistant tuberculosis prison,
where it was developed accidentally in Siberia.
We used this in the story as
an example of survival of the fittest,
which is a really well-known concept of evolution.
What happened was the authorities in this prison
didn’t use enough antibiotics.
They used enough to contain it but the germs evolved
and changed and became immune to the antibiotics.
They’ve actually found traces of this kind of tuberculosis
in Brighton Beach, in Long Island.
You know, we were working on it like crazy.
We had to get TB tests before we went
and after we came back.
This was a wonderful opportunity for me because
it was a big story, I think it was 48 pages
and it was just that the topic became so interesting to me
that we travelled for 58 days to
I think, 12 different countries and 26 different locations.
And we were doing it on four-by-five film
so it was a really challenging, challenging assignment.
And it was three weeks before my wedding, so…
Thank you very much.
( applause )
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