I am a nature and underwater photographer based in California. Photography came to me as an afterthought. Initially, I wanted to be a marine scientist. While attending school in Santa Barbara, I was particularly taken with marine mammals, and to fuel my interest I worked with marine mammal biologists and at Santa Barbara's Marine Mammal Center. As an aspiring field researcher, the camera was as much of an essential tool as the notepad when observing subjects and collecting data. Eventually and overtime, my interests shifted from the library and the lab to the lens and the darkroom. Although I really liked marine science, I loved nature and marine related photography.
Today, my home office and studio are in Monterey Bay; the most beautiful place I’ve been able to live and photograph above and below water. My work has been published and exhibited locally and abroad, in magazines, by research and conservation organization, in books, and in calendars. Below is a partial list of employers and publishers
I work as a freelance photographer and am currently working on a project documenting cutting edge technologies used by scientists to unveil sea turtles' hidden lives.
I encourage other SWOT team members to contact me regarding story ideas and suggestions in support of my sea turtle photo project
phone: 818.415.2767
website: BradleyPhotographic.com
country: USA
My favorite turtle moment was my first turtle moment, on a remote beach in Costa Rica. I was along side hard-working scientists and conservationists committed to recovering a plummeting leatherback turtle population. I walked slowly and quietly behind a female leatherback after she laid eggs and was making her way back into the water. I watched her enter the water as I said my goodbyes in my mind, and tried to contemplate the hundreds of millions of years leatherbacks have reenacted what I just saw. I realized that to think about leatherback turtles is to think about time itself. It was then that I looked down and felt a rush of excitement. The sand I was standing on, as was as all the sand on the beach, was wet and reflective, and it perfectly mirrored the sky above. The night was cloudless and crisp, and filled with stars -- the kind of stars you can only see in the most remote of places. As I stood on this reflection, it felt as though I was standing on the sky. Imagine standing on the ceiling of a planetarium. As Arthur C. Clarke as this may sound, I was standing on the heavens, on a celestial carpet, while contemplating time standing in leatherback turtle tracks.
