Currents
NE W S
WHAT IT TAKES TO CAPTURE
CAMERA Canon 7d LENSES
70-300mm, 17-55mm, 10-22mm
EQUIPMENT Tripod, Sandisk memory cards, Voltaic Systems solar panels and batteries
WATERPROOFING Sea to Summit waterproof bags
WILD IMAGES
that I had throughout the day, or a book passage that I read and after that I give a 60-second, uninhibited, piece of video that I shot in nature.” Fox doesn’t want people to watch because
the videos are of a cute animal, he wants people to truly connect. “Really rarely do we have the capacity to just focus on one single thing,” he says. “The minute of nature is a daily exercise is like a meditation; to try to disconnect from all our distractions and just to basically stop. Breathe. Relax. Listen.” Those four words are the basis of Fox’s
HOW DANIEL FOX AND THE WILD IMAGE PROJECT ARE WORKING TO SAVE US ALL
Daniel Fox may have the best job in the world. He travels the globe taking beauti- ful photographs of wild places and animals to try and give people an escape from their day-to-day world of stress and chaos. Fox uses his photographs and The Wild
Image Project to restore the connection people once had with nature. “Nature has become a concept in our culture and in our society,” says Fox. “It’s something we put on the wall, we look at on television, but it’s not really a place where we spend a lot of time.” Immersed in nature, we develop a sense
of humility, says Fox, but that is no longer prevalent in society. “We’ve lost this ability to get these teachings from nature, because we don’t spend time in it, so through my stories I try often to bring that back.” “The photography that I try to do,” says
Fox, “is I don’t hide from the animals, I want them to see me, I take what I call totems,
20 PADDLING MAGAZINE
MAKING THE WORLD WILD AGAIN
pictures of their face, and to me, what is re- ally important, is their eyes. So whether it’s a bear, or a wolf, or a fox, I want them to see me, I want that connection and I want their eyes.” To get close enough to get these intimate
portraits of animals, Fox is often sitting in the cockpit of a Wilderness Systems kayak. “It’s the perfect way to get around quietly, unobtrusively,” says Fox. “It gives you a per- spective that allows you to get into these remote places without disturbing much. It’s really an intimate way to travel and explore the wilderness.” Amidst their daily, bustling lives, people
rarely have the time to get that close to na- ture. To combat that, Fox has created a daily exercise that can fit into anyone’s schedule. “I came up with the idea of the Minute of Nature,” says Fox. “At the beginning of the video, I present this insight or this thought
work and a mantra that he tries to get peo- ple to use within their daily lives. “These four words combined together can carry a lot of power,” says Fox. Fox wants to bring this same appreciation
to wild places to children, so he has recently started a non-profit, called W.I.L.D. (Wil- derness Immersion for Leadership and Dis- coveries). “When you’re a teen or a child, there are moments that will last with you forever and come to define who you are,” says Fox. This August, Fox started paddling from
Victoria, British Columbia to San Francis- co, California in hopes of raising upwards of $10,000. That money will go towards send- ing two or three kids to a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) sea kayaking immersion camp, in 2015. “Going to a weekend camp is nice, but
you’ll never get that full experience unless you immerse yourself,” says Fox. “Wilder- ness immersion is truly the way to have that full experience, because you start to fully embrace that disconnection.” Check out Fox’s photographs through
the Wild Image Project and help him spread the love of wild places by supporting his non-profit, W.I.L.D., at www.wildim-
ageproject.com.—Ben Duchesney
PHOTOS: DANIEL FOX
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