Rangefinder Magazine
September 2005

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Susan Middleton by Robert Neubert
Photography That Shines “Soft but Dramatic Light” on Endangered Species

We’re in the midst of a biological catastrophe that’s the greatest since the end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.” So states Edward O. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard professor.

1, 3. Black-and-white images of the hundreds of endangered species photographed by Susan Middleton and David Liitschwager include San Joaquin kit fox (1) and Stephens’ kangaroo rat (3).

Susan Middleton responds by shining a soft but dramatic light on this growing disaster through her extraordinary photographs of endangered species. Since 1986, the self-acknowledged “obsessed photographer” has traveled throughout the world to capture compelling portraits of endangered plants and animals and share them with millions of concerned people.

The work of Middleton and photographic collaborator David Liittschwager transcends traditional nature photography. Showcased in three remarkable books, with a fourth set to debut in October, their images have also appeared in magazines and exhibitions, and been the subject of an Emmy-award-winning National Geographic documentary.

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Despite her prominence in the photography world, Middleton didn’t start out to be a photographer. After graduating from the University of Santa Clara in California, she worked in its art museum, producing video programs and curating exhibitions. Her interest in photography blossomed when she saw an Irving Penn exhibit of street objects. She was entranced by ordinary objects depicted in an extraordinary manner and started taking photographs herself.

Middleton was hired in 1977 by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to photograph cultural objects in the Anthropology Department. She photographed for its magazines, annual reports, companion books to exhibitions and member events. Guided by her own interests, she expanded into photography of preserved animals and plants in other scientific collections, and then to live subjects swimming in the Steinhart Aquarium. She was named the first chair of the Academy’s Photography Department and served in that role from 1982 to 1995.

Little did Middleton know that photography of two Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizards for the Academy’s quarterly magazine would provide a glimpse into her future as an endangered-species photographer. She covered the assignment with close-ups of the lizards in an approximation of their natural habitat, but also posed them on black velvet to see how they looked in a nontraditional, portrait-like setting. The latter image grabbed the attention of the California Nature Conservancy, which used it in a successful 1984 campaign to protect the lizard’s Southern California habitat.

A species of concern, ‘O’opu Alamo’o is a freshwater fish native to healthy windward-side streams of the Hawaiian Islands and appears in Middleton and Liittschwager’s third book, Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii. Photograph by David Liitschwager and Susan Middleton with Environmental Defense.	The rare Orangeblack Hawaiian damselfly holds forth in coastal wetlands of the Hawaiian Islands.	The rare Koa bug, seen here emerging from the pupal stage into adulthood, can be found on the five main Hawaiian Islands, but only at 1 to 5 percent of historic levels. Photograph by David Liitschwager and Susan Middleton with Environmental Defense.

The next year Middleton took a year’s leave from the Academy to work with Richard Avedon at his New York City studio. She coordinated the production of large prints for a traveling exhibition and book, each called “In The American West” (see July 2005 Rangefinder).

While working with Avedon, she began collaborating with Liittschwager, who had been assisting Avedon with advertising photography for clients such as Chanel, Revlon and Calvin Klein. At the end of the year’s leave, California Nature Conservancy asked Middleton to photograph two more endangered species, the San Joaquin kit fox and the San Joaquin antelope squirrel. She invited Liittschwager to come to California and work with her on this project.

“And we’ve never stopped,” she says.

The Conservancy’s assignment led to a collection of 25 images of California endangered species, and later resulted in the first book for the pair. The two photographers fine-tuned their method of getting very close to plants and animals, showing them in a way that captured dramatically the beauty of each subject.

The endangered Hawaiian monk seal lives mostly in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that stretch from Kauai to beyond Midway Atoll.	Hesperomannia arbuscula is a distinctive, endangered member of the sunflower family found in only five locations on the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Oahu. Photograph by 2001 David Liitschwager and Susan Middleton with Environmental Defense.	The screeching of the endangered thick-billed parrot can be heard up to three miles away in the Arizona wilderness. One of only two parrots native to the continental U.S., it was reintroduced to the Arizona back country in the 1980s. Photograph by Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager.

For most of their projects on the U.S. mainland, Middleton and Liittschwager have worked from a large truck crammed with 4000 pounds of cameras, lights, softboxes, light stands, reflectors, sandbags, backgrounds, lumber, aquarium tanks, filters, pumps and generators.

Over the past few years, their efforts focused on the Hawaiian Islands. This field work necessitated a considerable downsizing in equipment because often the duo made lengthy hikes over steep terrain—often slippery and wet—to get to their subjects in ecologically sensitive areas that very few people ever see firsthand. Everything had to fit into their backpacks.

	An endangered Florida panther graced the cover of Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager’s second book, Witness: Endangered Species of North America. Only several dozen of these cats are thought to exist in just two parts of Southern Florida. Photograph by Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager.

Out of the Wild and Into Print
Here Today: Portraits of Our Vanishing Species was Middleton and Liittschwager’s first book (1991, Chronicle Books). The book features a foreword by Wendell Berry, the highly respected poet, novelist, essayist, conservationist and farmer. Its color and black-and-white portraits exemplify their innovative method of using a black or white background, highlighting the features of each endangered or threatened species while underscoring the absence of natural habitat.

Exhibitions, lectures and magazine articles followed, but always Middleton and Liittschwager returned to the field to photograph more endangered species. Their next book was published in 1994 by Chronicle Books, with two years of photography and travel sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences.

Witness: Endangered Species of North America features an introduction by Edward O. Wilson, curator of entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. The 100 color and black-and-white portraits present insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mussels, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and plants on the North America endangered species list. As Library Journal said in a review, the authors “have lavished as much care and attention on the pictures of the lowliest plants as on the majestic eagle, thus sending the message that each endangered species is unique, exquisite and precious in the web of life.”

The cover photo was taken just a few feet away from the watchful eyes of a Florida panther, with no sign of the pine forests and Everglades wetlands it once called home.

National Geographic was attracted to Middleton and Liittschwager’s work, and followed them with a film crew from the woods of North Carolina to the prairies of the West as they photographed endangered plants and animals. The result was “America’s Endangered Species: Don’t Say Good-bye,” which appeared on NBC in 1998 as a National Geographic special. The documentary earned an Emmy and was televised later on PBS stations across the country.

In 2001 National Geographic published the photographic team’s next book, Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii, in association with Environmental Defense. With foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.S. Merwin, its 300 color and black-and-white photographs and text tell a powerful story of rare and endangered species and their remote Hawaiian Islands habitats. Species are presented both in the trademark style against stark backgrounds, and as they appear in their native habitats.

As Middleton notes, fully a quarter of the federally listed endangered species live in Hawaii. Many of those presented in the book are either new to science or previously thought to be extinct.

Hawaiian Odyssey Leads to Remote Archipelago
Middleton can’t get Hawaii out of her mind, or camera lens. Two intense years of field photography trips to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands culminates in October with the publication of her and Liittschwager’s next book, Archipelago: Portraits of Life in the World’s Most Remote Island Sanctuary. A little-known extension of the main Hawaiian Islands, this isolated archipelago consists of two volcanic basalt islands and eight atolls that stretch from Kauai to beyond Midway Atoll.

“Out in the archipelago, the only way animals or plant seeds arrived was by wind, water or wing,” Middleton observes. “I’m thrilled and honored to have photographed rare native plants and animals that very few people have ever seen before, most of which exist only there.”

National Geographic will complement the book’s October release with a 22-page feature story the same month in the magazine, exhibitions in Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, and then in cities across the U.S. for two years.

Armed only with a backpack full of photographic gear, Middleton once again has shed new, soft light on other extraordinary rare and endangered species. And in doing so, she continues to work tirelessly for their preservation, capturing their essence so it may be shared with responsive people around the world.

For more information on the endangered species photography of Middleton and Liittschwager, email them at esp@econet.org or visit their web site: www.endangered species.org/. 

Susan Middleton photographs the extremely rare Kanaloa plant using two small Photoflex LiteDome softboxes and a Hasselblad 553 ELX with Zeiss 135mm Macro-Planar lens with auto-bellows. The first new Hawaiian genus discovered in nearly 90 years, Kanaloa exists only as two wild plants on desolate Kahoolawe, smallest of the main Hawaiian Islands, and as three propagated plants at the National Tropical Botanical Garden Nursery on Kauai. Photograph © David Liitschwager and Susan Middleton with Environmental Defense.

Lighting the Way in the Wild
Although Susan Middleton photographs endangered species in their native habitats, she and photographic collaborator David Liitschwager usually employ a decidedly nontraditional technique, with precise lighting very close up against a solid black or white background.

“Our portraits are meant to be somewhat provocative,” she states. “They’re not done like typical nature photography. Instead, we strive to reveal the unique beauty and character of an animal or plant in a way that not only provokes an emotional response, but also shows it isolated. Conceptually, we eliminate any trace of context or habitat—which is exactly what needs to be preserved to ensure the survival of these endangered species.”

For backgrounds, the photographers employ black velvet and white plastic or Plexiglas®, cut to size for each subject so that in reality it becomes a custom studio.

Out on the remote archipelago that comprises the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Middleton and Liitschwager faced extremely bright skies and luminous waters in photographing marine flora and fauna. They converted several sizes of aquariums into marine studios, using a white background to visually isolate many of the sea creatures and create portraits that reflect the open, light environment in which they live.

“Wherever we photograph, lighting is critical,” Middleton notes. “Sometimes we set up two Photoflex softboxes at 45-degree angles to the subject, with one as a key or fill light, or in combination with natural light. Our goal is to avoid flat light, and the softboxes enable us to create an environment of diffused light that also has shape and gives us the realistic look we want.”

Many locations in which Middleton and Liitschwager shoot are logistically hard to get to, such as steep, wet slopes with uncertain footing, and often they must work in tight quarters.

“We must be very careful as to where and how we make the photographs,” Middleton says. “The photo-technical package I use has proven to be a real workhorse, lightweight and compact, but also sturdy and reliable. It provides the exceptional amount of detail I want in my images, with the flexibility to respond to rapidly changing light conditions.”

	In a misty bog on Kauai’s remote Alaka’i Swamp Trail, Susan and photographic collaborator David Liitschwager prepare to photograph the endangered Lysimachia Daphnoides, a shrub found only in this swamp.

Middleton’s cameras of choice are Hasselblad 553 ELX with Zeiss 135mm Macro-Planar lens with auto-bellows, and Nikon F100 and F4 with a Nikon 100mm macro lens. She uses Photoflex small LiteDome and extra-small SilverDome softboxes with battery-powered Norman and Nikon flash units, several sizes of silver/white and translucent Photoflex LiteDisc reflectors, and a Photoflex white satin umbrella with removable black cover.

“With the softboxes, I can literally shape the light to get the quality of light I want, adding to the natural light to capture even tiny detail such as the highlight in a damselfly’s eye (see page 41),” Middleton says. “These lightweight softboxes enable me to make a photograph in the field that has the quality of a refined studio portrait, especially for smaller subjects such as plants and insects.”

Transparency film used for the portraits is primarily Kodak Ektachrome E100 SW, and the 35mm transparency film for other photographs is Fujifilm Provia RDP 100. The black-and-white film is Agfapan 100.

In this challenging and sensitive natural environment, some of her photo kit elements transcend what might be expected. One of her most frequently used tools is a little makeup brush, used often to dust off flowers and leaves so they can be photographed at their best. Another key component is large plastic garbage bags, essential for protecting cameras and lighting equipment during the sometimes frequent and torrential downpours.

Another critically important tool is patience. Often it takes hours, or even days, before all the right elements fall into place so an image can be captured exactly as Middleton has previsualized it.