UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: Ward has opened the eyes of Gabon's children with his photos of their country's wildlife, including the hippo and the elephants below.
PRESERVING FLORIDA: Grad student Carlton Ward photographs ranches in the Sunshine State, hoping to help save them.
By Sarah L. Stewart
Running from a startled forest elephant; riding out a sun-blotting sandstorm in Mali’s arid Sahel region; wading neck-deep through a lagoon in a Gabonese rainforest. Carlton Ward Jr., a master’s student, documents life at its extremes to show others what he sees: a world worth protecting.
The Smithsonian Institution published his photos of Gabon wildlife in a 318-page coffee-table book, The Edge of Africa, last year. Today, this eighth-generation Floridian focuses on his home state’s environment and culture.
Ward turned down a job at the Smithsonian to launch a non-profit organization of his own: the Legacy Institute for Nature and Culture (LINC), which aims to build “connections to natural heritage through communication.” He roams the state with his Nikon gear, raises funds and forges ties with environmental groups such as the Conservation Trust for Florida.
“We are losing 200,000 acres of rural land each year,” Ward says.
A descendant of former Gov. Doyle E. Carlton and member of a well-known Florida ranching family, Ward documents the state’s ranches, which he says provide an “important habitat for wildlife and wetlands.”
“I feel a deep sense of loss and concern every time I drive down a two-lane road in Florida and see it changing,” he says, bringing a fist to his chest, “because I recognize that it’s not changing for the better.”
Ward hopes that completing his master’s in interdisciplinary ecology in December will earn him even more credibility in conservation photography. His multimedia professional project (in lieu of a thesis), which surveys this fledgling field and draws from his experiences, serves as LINC’s foundation.
“I want to make a difference,” he says. “It’s not just the pictures, it’s what you do with them.”
Classy move
Take one look at Ward’s moody, twilight image of a hippo emerging from the surf (see opposite page) and you know he’s an artist. His work strikes a “balance of stellar technical skills, good science and emphatic photography,” says Prof. John Kaplan, faculty chair for Ward’s professional project.
Ward is, at his core, a conservationist. He belongs outdoors – after all, that’s where he has spent much of his 29 years. A bachelor’s degree in biology from Wake Forest instilled in him an urgency for conservation that drives his work and his life. In the four years since he began his coursework at UF, Ward has traveled the world with his camera.
“I’m pleased that I took as long as I did to return to do the thesis,” he says. “I’ve had enough professional experience now that I have a real practical understanding about the field of conservation photography.”
Ward’s passion for photography began half way through his undergraduate career, during a semester abroad in Australia. A camera shop owner in Surfer’s Paradise loaned him a manual Pentax to replace his stolen Minolta auto focus. For the first time, he had complete control of every shot. “That really set the fire,” he recalls.
At the time, Wake Forest offered no photography classes, so upon his return, Ward “talked his way onto” the school newspaper and yearbook. He honed his skills shooting sports and on trips to Kenya, Australia and South America before and after his 1998 graduation.
In 1999, while living in Tampa, Ward commuted to Gainesville to take Associate Prof. Bernell Tripp’s Magazine and Feature Writing course.
“I don’t think I will ever forget Carlton,” Tripp says. “Carlton is a dream student.”
He surpassed her expectations on each assignment, she says. His account of a trip to Peru, paired with about seven of his photographs, ran on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times’ travel section. He published two more of the articles he wrote for the class, one in Florida Wildlife magazine and another in the Times. Writing had become a vehicle for his photography.
“That [class] pretty much opened the door for me being where I am today,” he says.
African journey
In 2001, Ward landed a photojournalism internship at the Times. With that experience and a previous undergraduate internship at the Smithsonian, he joined a team of Smithsonian scientists later that summer as an intern in Gabon, a small and largely unexplored African nation.
Over two and a half years, he spent seven or eight months in Gabon helping to document the biodiversity of the Gamba Complex’s dense tropical rainforests. It resulted in The Edge of Africa, which showcased his photographs of some of the 400 species they found in the region.
“Gabon hasn’t been seen like this before,” says Smithsonian ecologist Michelle Lee, who wrote the text for the book. Although many Gabonese live in the countryside, they often never see their country’s nature as Ward captured it.
“He’s had a really big impact,” says Lee, who lives in Gabon.
At the book’s 2004 exhibition in Gabon, Ward saw the impact of his work. Besides the country’s vice president and other government officials, several hundred schoolchildren attended the event.
The children were astonished to see the natural wonders of their own country, Ward says. Some were amazed to see pictures of leopards, which they didn’t know lived in Gabon. One woman said that the book made her proud to be Gabonese.
Gabon President Omar Bongo, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other diplomats viewed the exhibit when it traveled to the UN building in New York last year. They each received a copy of The Edge of Africa.
The book has “absolutely” made a difference in conservation efforts in the region, says Patrick Campbell, research and conservation coordinator at the Smithsonian and a member of the team that worked in Gabon. Ward’s work has captured the attention of the Gabonese people and international environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“The most important thing is to tell the story and to tell it well,” he says.
Through his success, Ward has encountered some roadblocks. For four years in a row, he applied for the coveted National Geographic photography internship with no success (though he was a finalist for the last two years). The magazine also rejected his photo project on the Mali desert elephants, sending a staff photographer to cover it.
Smithsonian Magazine ran Ward’s piece as its July cover story.
His dedication to his work can create personal obstacles.
“I have trouble keeping a girlfriend, that’s for sure,” he says. “I spend a lot of time alone.”
Due to his travels, he spends less than half the year in his new house in Tampa.
“My world is now very spread out,” Ward says. When he’s in the field, “that becomes my world, and my connections fade a bit to this world. That becomes my reality.” Even when he’s with friends, “part of my mind is elsewhere. You don’t ever go home from it.”
FISH IN WATER: Ward aims to boost conservation in his home state of Florida.
