Nature Photographer Visualizing Your Nature Photos
by Tyrone Roblin
Article rating: 7.33
Adversity is an inevitable part of life, but something we must all learn to deal with. When you least expect it, trouble can strike and bring your progress to a screeching halt. It can destroy your momentum and cripple your self-confidence. However it’s not a matter of what comes your way, but rather how you choose to handle it that is important. You see our characters are never fully tested until things are NOT going our way and it is because of, not in spite of adversity that many of us grow and make a difference. The choice is ours.
This was certainly true for Michael Turco. As a young man he dreamt of a career in the music business. Turco wanted to be a musician and in pursuit of his dream took a job working for a small Los Angeles film production company that operated in and around the music industry. It seemed like a good place to be at the time. During the 5 years Turco spent working there he became interested in the moving image as well as still images before suffering an unfortunate and very serious illness that would change the direction of his life completely.
After falling ill Turco was forced to spend the better part of a year confined to a bed. “By the time I recovered” Turco said, “nearly two years had passed and my music career was at a virtual stand still. I felt whatever I was going to do I was pretty much starting back at square one.”
Near the beginning of his recovery Turco was given a 35mm SLR camera. A Minolta 7000 with a Minolta 28-105mm lens. He wasted no time and started taking pictures right away, more specifically nature images. “I found it therapeutic. When I showed the work to my friends and relatives they told me I had a natural gift and ought to pursue it.”
Turco continued to take pictures for the simple enjoyment of it, but it wasn’t until he met a woman working at small gift shop at the local zoo and showed her his portfolio that his hobby took a more serious turn. “She held a masters degree in art and was impressed with my work. It was at this point that I decided to pursue photography as my career”
That was 11 years ago. “Since then it has been a slow steady climb. In the beginning I managed to sell some of my work to a number of postcard companies and in 1990 entered an image in the Sierra Magazines photo contest in which I won 2nd place for black and white landscapes. With one national postcard company it came to the point where I sold so many images to them that half their line was my work. From there I went into selling images to various publishing companies; calendars were the first big hit.”
“In 1994 I submitted work to Avalanche Publishing for their frog calendar. At the time Avalanche was a small new calendar company. They used one of my red-eyed tree frog images on the cover and sales doubled from their previous year. The publisher was thrilled, when they set up their display both at trade shows the frog calendar cover pulled buyers into their booth. The next year they offered me the calendar and I have been doing it ever since.
His success in natural photography continued working on assignment in Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Zambia as well as focusing on several regions of the United States.
In 1997 Turco documented orangutan rehabilitation work at all of the reintroduction centers in Indonesia. Upon his return he was offered a traveling exhibit of his work on a grant from the State of Florida through the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.
“In 1998, on assignment with BBC Wildlife and Canadian Wildlife Federation. I was the first person to photograph wild simakobu monkeys in the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia. The National Wildlife Federation published an article with the work in 2000. Some of the simakobu images were picked up by a videographer who was producing a short documentary about the researcher I worked with, illegal logging of her protected land, and simakobu for National Geographic Television. The documentary won an award for best of series from National Geographic and I was given my first assignment with National Geographic to create production/promotional stills for an Explorer program filmed in Venezuela. That was this past January. “I am always working on new projects, some come to fruition faster than others. In this business you put many irons in the fire and keep stirring the fire until your irons are ready to come out.” Turco has teamed up with the Florida Natural History Museum again and is presently waiting for funding on a series of traveling exhibits from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
Michael Turco’s success as a photographer is a prime example of how one man turned adversity into opportunity.
