Capturing the Impact of Avalanche Rescue Dogs | National Geographic

[Music] It's impossible to spend time with animals and not walk away feeling that something else is going on in there. I'm very passionate about trying to tell a story about animal intelligence, so this assignment with National Geographic on avalanche dogs was a wonderful opportunity to ignite this larger project that I have in my mind.

[Music] I'm a National Geographic photographer. [Music] I'm here in Bozeman, Montana, to try and tell the story about a man named Graham and his avalanche rescue dog, Erna. What really pulled me into this assignment and the angle that I was coming from is animal intelligence. So, what I'm really trying to do is to tell a story that shows that dogs are thinking sentient beings.

To convey that, Erna is out there thinking about her job. Every time I take a step, I fall down up to my knee. People think the lives of photographers are idyllic, romantic even, and that you just go out there and the photos flow like wine. But the reality is that there's a lot of stuff that you're dealing with.

There are a few instances where we're having to trek through snow to get to other places where you couldn't ski. So, it was like 15 degrees, so that makes everything harder. You know, even the best cameras aren't built for these conditions. I'm not a huge skier, your hands freezing, waist-deep in snow, but $40,000 camera gear on your back. I'm thinking to myself, every picture I'm trying to take, everything, everything is against me, and I have a couple of days to pull this off.

What do you got? A lot of times, the images we want to get end up coming to fruition in the field in the moment. I saw Emily, Graham's wife, getting buried, and that's when I knew that that was the picture. I thought, you know, why don't I get in there? Because I could show what it's like to be rescued by a dog.

All right, so I'm gonna have enough oxygen down there just fine. All right? I mean, the challenge of getting that shot—you're in a teeny little hole, and you kind of have to contort yourself, and I'm not the most flexible person. A look on her face, you know that she's thinking about one thing and that's about getting me out.

And then the challenge was that as she was digging, snow was falling on top of me like every five seconds. I was having to wipe the white snow off the front of the lens and then take a picture. My gut said I was soaked. Good, you know? I think if you were seriously buried in an avalanche, you can imagine the feeling that you must be having when you see her, a retriever, digging the hole open and saving your life. I mean, it's got to be a moment.

[Music] You always don't think that you've got the shot, and there's a saying that if you think you've got the shot, then you don't. So you always have this worry: Did I get the picture? Did I get the picture? And when you get a photo that you're happy with, it’s like Christmas.

What I'm thinking about all the time is what Graham and Erna are doing that is special and what do I think is important to tell. They're out there saving people's lives every single day. [Music]