Michael Nichols

Photographer
Michael Nichols

Michael Nichols has produced 25 stories for National Geographic magazine, devoting his career to producing photography that effects environmental change. His work with conservationists such as Mike Fay and Jane Goodall has resulted in many books, including Brutal Kinship, The Last Place on Earth, The Great Apes and The Year of the Tiger, as well as the creation of 13 national parks in Africa and reforms in chimp conservation. He is a former member of Magnum Photos, and he founded the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2007.

Photo © Ken Geiger, National Geographic

As of October 23, 2013

On The Web

www.michaelnicknichols.com/
/michaelnicknichols

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Featured Photographs

  • This 300‐foot redwood is roughly 1,500 years old and has the most complex crown structure scientists have ever mapped. A team of seven photographers collaborated with Nichols over 19 days; in one magic hour, they created this composite image of 84 individual images, which took 120 hours to stitch together.
    National Geographic Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California 2009
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
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  • A hippo surfs off the coast of Gabon. "Surfing hippos" are extremely rare; most hippopotamuses wade in rivers and lakes. These animals became protected after 13 national parks were created as a result of conservationist J. Michael Fay's Megatransect.
    National Geographic Loango National Park, Gabon, Africa 2003
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
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  • Michael Nichols covered in "Sweat Bees" during the Megatransect.
    Ndoki National Park, Congo Basin, Africa 1999
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • A camera trap was set to capture this crocodile coming and going from its riverside den.
    National Geographic Zakouma National Park, Chad, Africa 2006
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
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  • It took several days to find the massacre site outside of the southern border of Zakouma National Park. The perpetrators were never caught; the villagers and the military accused each other of killing the elephants.
    National Geographic Garanda Village, Chad, Africa 2006
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Eight hundred elephants, led by a single matriarchal female who knows the safest route to fresh forage, head out of the Zakouma National Park. That evening, poachers ambushed the group. Twenty animals were massacred.
    National Geographic Zakouma National Park, Chad, Africa 2006
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Men fashion themselves as tigers during an annual celebration in southern India.
    National Geographic Mangalore, India 1997
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Surrounded and protected by adult females, young elephants play and mock fight. After witnessing the massacre in Chad, Nichols worked to establish elephants as sentient creatures with intricate family ties.
    National Geographic Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, Africa 2007
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • In 1990, Mike Fay discovered a society of chimpanzees who had never encountered humans. They possessed an abundant amount of curiosity without the innate fear of man found in other African wildlife. Twenty years later, these chimps have been studied and protected but remain vulnerable.
    National Geographic Goualougo Triangle, Republic of the Congo, Africa 2002
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • In 2002, Jane Goodall, then 68, hiked through three swamps to lend her celebrity to the effort to expand a national park that would protect the vulnerable naïve chimps of the Goualougo Triangle.
    National Geographic Goualougo Triangle, Republic of the Congo, Africa 2002
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • A young tigress, recently pushed out of the pride by her mother, seeks relief from sweltering 120‐degree heat in a pool, despite its fetid brew of rolling leaves and monkey urine. She takes her own picture by breaking an infared beam.
    National Geographic Bandhavgarh National Park, India 1996
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Whiskey, a five‐year‐old chimpanzee, is held captive in a car‐repair garage. He is chained by his neck in a dark, wet, disused lavatory, having become too dangerous to continue as the family pet.
    National Geographic Bujumbura, Burundi, Africa 1989
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Lake Tele in Northern Congo, a 3.5‐mile‐wide basin surrounded by vast swamp, is one of the most remote places on earth. Pygmy oral traditions led cryptozoologists to search here for mokele‐mbembe, the last living dinosaur.
    National Geographic Republic of the Congo, Africa 1998
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Nichols' introduction to wildlife and conservation photography came in 1980 with this image of a silverback mountain gorilla. The resulting photo‐essay told the story of The Mountain Gorilla Project, a group working to stop poaching, educate communities and familiarize gorillas to harmless observers, the beginnings of eco‐tourism.
    National Geographic Virunga Mountains, Rwanda, Africa 1980
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • In Chad, elephants live in complete danger. This male elephant was killed within earshot of an anti‐poaching team, who collected the ivory to ensure it didn't end up in China. They did not catch the killers.
    National Geographic Zakouma National Park, Chad, Africa 2006
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Nine months through his 456‐day Megatransect, Mike Fay surveys the surrounding ocean of trees. A chain of rock outcrops in Minkebe Forest marked the most remote point in Fay's journey, 45 miles from the nearest village.
    National Geographic Minkebe Forest, Republic of the Congo, Africa 2000
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • A tagged northern spoked owl swoops toward a researcher's lure in a young redwood forest.
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Bambendjelle Pygmies dance with the flooded forest spirit Mafoodya. The culture of the Pygmies is more endangered than the wildlife protected in Nouabale‐Ndoki National Park.
    National Geographic Djoube, Republic of the Congo, Africa 1999
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • A mandrill, orphaned by a shotgun blast, grabs for the camera from a hunting camp where it is tethered on a rope.
    National Geographic Gabon, Africa 2000
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • All forest elephants fear humans; this elephant charges in response to the photographer's scent.
    Dzanga Bai, Dzanga- Ndoki National Park, Central African Republic, Africa 1993
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Darkness falls at a small village on the Motaba River as a Bantu hunter appears with his shotgun and food for his family: a spot‐nosed guenon.
    National Geographic Motaba River, Republic of the Congo, Africa 1999
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Cathedral silence fills the old‐growth sanctuary of Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
    National Geographic Humboldt County, California 2008
    Photo by: Michael Nichols
  • Lions in Zakouma often feast on young elephants in the dry season, when herds become concentrated around water holes. Orphans of adult elephants killed by poachers are especially vulnerable.
    National Geographic Zakouma National Park, Chad, Africa 2006
    Photo by: Michael Nichols

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